They came back, and  that was all that mattered.

It was only just over a year they were away, but it was an awful year.  At first I didn't even know they'd really left. Well, I knew Sam was going off to Crickhollow with Mr. Frodo, after Frodo went and sold Bag End to those Sackville-Bagginses. 

The Sackville-Bagginses, Mistress Lobelia and her son Lotho. That's a whole other story, that is.

But Sam – of course he would go with Mr. Frodo.  He was just silly about Mr. Frodo; he was like a squire with his knight, something like that. He would have followed him to the ends of the earth, and I guess he really did. Followed him into Mordor, anyway, and that's about as near the end as I want to hear about.  And he brought him out again, what's more, and back to the Shire.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm that muddled in the head these days, seems I can't tell a story straight. 

They went off to Crickhollow, like I said, and I was pretty miffed. Sam and I had been keeping company several years by then, and I thought he really cared for me. I wasn't  sewing my wedding dress yet, exactly, but I thought I knew who I'd be marrying, when the time came! And then that last summer before they left, it seemed like everything changed.

I couldn't put my finger on it, what was wrong. Sam still came up to the farm three or four times a week, and we walked out together, or went on picnics with my brothers and his sister Marigold. Sam made us all laugh, like he always had, reciting poems he'd made up, or singing some song he'd learned from Mr. Bilbo when he was a lad.

But it wasn't the same. He seemed to be only half with us, and where the rest of him was at, I couldn't figure out. There was an expression in his eyes, like he was looking in as much as he was looking out, if you take my meaning.

 And he didn't say nothing about me coming to Crickhollow. When I first heard about the move, I thought, well, here's our chance to get married. Mr. Frodo'll be needing a housekeeper as well as a gardener, in his new house.  Even if it's a lot smaller than Bag End, he surely won't expect Sam to do all  the work, the gardening and cooking and cleaning, everything. So I thought, you watch, girl, Sam will speak sometime this summer. Any day now, he'll speak.

But he didn't speak, and then the summer was over. The day before Mr. Frodo's birthday, he came by the farm and took me for a walk. I thought sure he'd speak then, finally, but he hardly said a word the whole time.  When we got back he stopped by the big tree at the end of the lane, and put his arms around me.

"I won't come up to the house right now, Rosie. I'll just say my good-byes here, where there ain't no one watching."  And he hugged me so tight, I thought he'd squeeze the breath right out of me, but I wasn't complaining, not me. And then he kissed me, just once.

"I'll come back as soon as I can, Rosie. You take care of yourself now." 

And then he was gone, back along the road to Hobbiton, and it was so dark under the trees, I couldn't even see him after the first few steps. I didn't see him again till more than a year later, when he came riding into our yard on that pony, all done up in chain mail and helmet and not looking like my Sam at all. 

It was only a few days after he left that Fredegar Bolger came back from Crickhollow, and my brother Jolly saw him at the pub in Bywater. He was laughing about it at breakfast next morning.

"Frodo Baggins must’ve had some housewarming party, is all I can say, because if you ask me, Fatty Bolger is still drunk! You should've heard the story he was telling last night."

My father looked up from his plate.

"Mr. Fredegar Bolger, is that who you're talking about, Jolly?"

"Uh, yes, Da.  Mr. Fredegar. But Da, you should've heard him – what a story! He says they all took off at the crack of dawn, the very next morning after Sam and Mr. Frodo got there – Sam and Frodo and Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, and a string of ponies, right through the Hedge into the Old Forest, if you please—"

My mother was dishing up stewed apples, and she nearly dropped the ladle in the pot. "The Old Forest! Why that's crazy, that is!  Nobody goes in there, nobody with any  sense -" 

"Of course not, Mum.  I'm telling you, it's a crazy story, and it gets worse. So Mr. Fredegar's all alone in that little Crickhollow house – he wasn't going into the Old Forest, not for Mr. Frodo nor nobody. He's there alone, and in the middle of the night the place gets attacked by spooks! They come in the front door, and he runs out the back and all the way to the nearest neighbor, a mile off. Must be the most exercise he's taken in a year. The neighbors sound the alarm and the whole of Buckland is out there chasing around in the dark, looking for Mr. Fredegar's burglars. I wish I'd been there to see it!"

He flung himself back in his chair, laughing fit to bust, and I had to twist his ear to get his attention.

"Never mind Fatty and his spooks, what's happened to Sam? Did they really go in the Old Forest? Are they all right?"

"I don't know, Rose; all I know is what Fa-  Mr. Fredegar was telling us. He never said if they came out of the Forest, only that they went in."

"And did he say why?" my father asked.

"No." Jolly was sober now. "No, just that they took the ponies and went in at first light, and he said good-bye to them at the Hedge. Seemed like they were all afraid of something, and they left him behind to sort of guard the house. Funny person to choose for a guard, if you ask me."

"And then someone came and broke in – sounds like maybe they did need a guard," said my Da.

"Well – if you can believe any of it!" Jolly exclaimed. "But the whole thing is crazy, Da. What's to be afraid of? "

That's how innocent we  were then– what's to be afraid of? This is the Shire, for pity's sake. Nothing ever happens in the Shire. 

But even then, when we didn't know to be afraid, I couldn't rest; I was all in a dither to know that Sam was safe. I badgered Da about it until he threw his napkin down on the table, exasperated.

"All right, Rose! I can't take time from the harvest, and I can't spare the older boys. But Nibs can drive the pony cart out to Buckland and see if he can get any news. Will that satisfy you?  Likely enough he'll find it's all some prank dreamed up by Merry Brandybuck, or him and Mr. Pippin, to tease Mr. Fredegar."

But when Nibs got back two days later, he went straight to Da without a word to me and a look on his face that froze the questions on my lips. They went in the tack room at the back of the barn and closed the door. A quarter of an hour later, Da called me in.

"Rose," he said, and cleared his throat. "Rose, my dear – my dear girl – I'm afraid it's bad news, Rosie."

I felt my knees buckling and sat down on a stool, staring at him.

"Nibs asked all round the neighborhood, and it sounds as if Mr. Fredegar's story is true after all.  Crickhollow was broken into, certainly, and there's no one living there now. There was trouble of some sort, they think from the Old Forest, and they raised the alarm but they didn't catch anyone. No one has seen Sam, or Mr. Frodo and his friends, but they did find signs that someone had taken a string of ponies through the Hedge into the Old Forest. And there's no sign that anyone has come back out."

Everyone assumed they must be dead, killed by some wicked, nameless thing in the Old Forest. Mum sat in the kitchen crying into her apron; you could hear her sobs all over the house. Sam and Marigold had been so much in her care, after their mother died, that they were almost like two of her own brood.

"Someone's got to go to Hobbiton and tell the Gaffer." My father's voice was thick with tears. Sam was a favorite with him, steady and faithful. "Sound as a bell," Da  used to say. "Sam Gamgee will always ring true, however you strike him."

And now Sam had disappeared into the Old  Forest and not come out. The reality of it hit me suddenly, and I staggered against the wall, clinging to the doorframe for support. Jolly caught me round the waist.

"Come on, sis, you better lie down a while." 

He led me down the hall and tucked me into bed. Jolly is my twin – we may fight like cats and dogs, but of all the family, we understand each other best.

I lay there in the quiet bedroom, stunned, remembering. I had been so angry when he went away without asking me to marry him, after thinking all summer that this was our chance. I'd even wondered if I had misread him – maybe he didn't really care, maybe I was just another kid sister to him, like Marigold. I had always known I loved Sam, but maybe I had only imagined that he felt the same.

But now, thinking it was too late, thinking I would never see him again, I had no doubts. I remembered his bone-crunching hug at the bottom of the lane, the night before they left, and I knew he had loved me, for true. I cried then, and couldn't stop.

I cried off and on all night, and when morning came I stayed in bed, half-dozing and unwilling anyway to get up and face the day. Sometime in the forenoon the door opened, and Sam's sister rushed in and threw herself on top of me.

"Rose, Rose, I've just heard -- your father came up and told the Gaffer!"

She was crying up a storm, and I dragged myself out from under so I could get my arms round her.

"Oh, Rose, it can't be true, can it? Not Sam, not our Sam—"

And like a thunderclap it hit me that no, it couldn't be true.

Not Sam, killed off just like that by some nameless horror, some spook out of the Old Forest. Sam was daylight and hope and plain hobbit sense. You couldn't imagine Sam done in by some cloudy nothing creeping out of the shadows. Sam would laugh in its face and hit it with a garden hoe.

Suddenly I just flat out didn't believe it. 

"No, Mari, not our Sam! I don't care what they say, I don't believe he's dead! And think, he was with Mr. Frodo, wasn't he? Remember all the stories about Frodo's uncle Bilbo?  They say he fought a dragon and got captured by goblins and all kinds of awful things, but he still came home in the end, safe and sound."

Marigold raised her head from my pillow, her face blotchy from crying.

"But Rose, do you think those stories about Bilbo are true?"

To be honest, I had never more than half believed them. Sam had grown up on Bilbo's tales, and to him they were as factual as the small talk down at the pub, but I had always taken them with more than a grain of salt. Now, however, I clung to them as a promise of what could be – if Bilbo Baggins could go off into the Wild and face all kinds of dangers, and come back alive, then there was hope for Sam.

"Yes, I do,"  I said stoutly. "And Mr. Frodo is a whole lot like his uncle, everybody says so. They're lucky, that's what they are, all the Bagginses. Sam will be all right with Mr. Frodo. You'll see, Mari – they'll come riding home one of these days, just like Mr. Bilbo did, when everyone thought he was dead and they were auctioning off Bag End!"

My father looked troubled when Marigold repeated this to him.

"Well, it's true enough, Marigold, as far as it goes. Mr. Bilbo certainly did come back, large as life and mighty put out to find his belongings on the auction block! But as for his stories of goblins and dragons and spiders the size of a farm wagon…."

"All we know is, they went in the Old Forest," I said. "There's no reason to say anything happened to them in there, anything bad. Maybe they went right on out the other side, maybe Mr. Frodo took a notion to go look for his uncle." 

"Maybe," said Da, rubbing his chin. "And maybe there's more to the story than we know. I'm wondering who broke into Crickhollow – and why they left Fredegar Bolger to guard the place."

And that was a good question, I had to admit. I wondered what else Fatty Bolger might know about the whole mysterious business. 

I walked Marigold back to Hobbiton – she couldn't leave the Gaffer alone, of course.

"We ought to talk to Fatty Bolger," I said. "I guess he knows what's going on, if anyone does."

"Well, but will he talk to us, Rose? I mean…"

I knew what she meant. Fatty is a gentlehobbit, and rich besides. He'd never done more than nod to either of us, if he passed us on the road. He talked to my brothers, when he met them at the pub, but my father would skin me alive if I set foot in The Green Dragon, and the Gaffer was the same way. *

"He'll talk to us – he has to! He's the only one who knows what happened at Crickhollow."

I racked my brain. Well, there was his nickname. Folks didn't call him Fatty just to be complimentary – Mr. Fredegar Bolger was a very substantial hobbit in more ways than one. He liked good food, did Fatty, and Marigold and I were both fine cooks, if I say so who shouldn't.

"What's your prize dish, Marigold? If you really wanted to impress someone with your cooking, what would you make?"

"Mushroom-sausage pie. Sam says – Sam always said – he'd die for my mushroom-sausage pie." She stopped still in the middle of the road, her face in her hands.

I pulled her close and put my arm around her. "Buck up, Mari, that's a girl. You'll make mushroom pie for Sam again one of these days, I know you will! But first you're going to make one for Fatty Bolger. And I'll make him a black walnut cheesecake that'll have his tongue hanging out. We'll just see if Fatty will talk to us!"

And he did, of course. As it turned out, Fatty was eager to talk, and we could have gone right to his house without the bribes of food, and he still would have welcomed us and poured out his story. Not that he turned down the food, not at all.

The thing was, Fatty wasn't too popular in the neighborhood just then. Once it came out that Mr. Frodo and Sam had vanished in the Old  Forest without a trace, folks looked around for someone to blame, and Fatty was right there handy. Mr. Frodo might have been considered an odd bird in some ways, but he was well-liked for all that, and Sam was a general favorite. Fatty should have stopped them going in there, folks said, and it was no manner of use for Fatty to say they wouldn't listen.

But though Fatty was willing to talk to us, it was no more than what we'd heard already. Mr. Merry had gotten some pack ponies and loaded them up, and the four hobbits had gone into the Old Forest at first light, saying goodbye to Fatty at the Hedge.

"But Mr. Fredegar, why didn't you just come on home after that?" I asked, dishing him out another portion of mushrooms. "Were you waiting for them to come back?"

"No, no -- knew they weren't coming back. I was just making the house look lived in, you know, so no one would realize they were gone."

"What did it matter, whether anyone realized?"  Marigold had found the beer barrel in Fatty's kitchen, and she was keeping his tankard full. Mushroom-sausage pie can make a person pretty thirsty, I guess because the sausage meat is so salty.

"Well, Frodo didn't want to be followed, you see. They'd had a scare on the road already, some strange riders in black cloaks who seemed to be looking for him. That's why they went in the Old Forest in the first place, throw those riders off the track, don't you know."

I nodded at Mari behind his back – she'd told me about the rider in black who questioned the Gaffer outside his door, the evening they all left Bag End, but Fatty hadn't mentioned them before. Now we were getting somewhere.

"Are you ready for some of that cheesecake, Mr. Fredegar? It goes real well with sherry, if you have some in the house."

Of course he had sherry in the house – the finest – and Mari and I each had a glass to keep him company.  And Mari made sure his glass stayed full.

"Where were they going, after they got through the Forest? Are they looking for Mr. Bilbo?"

Fatty by now was completely relaxed, jovial and expansive. I cut him another piece of cheesecake, and he dug in with no loss of enthusiasm.

"Not looking for Bilbo, no. Going to Rivendell, looking for the Elves. Not sure I believe in Elves, myself.  Never saw one, at any rate."

"I never did either," Marigold said, filling his glass again. "Did you, Rose?"

"Not me, but Sam said he did, once. What  do they want with the Elves, Mr. Fredegar?"

"Just call me Fatty, Rose. Everyone calls me Fatty. Frodo is taking Bilbo's ring to the Elves, that's why.  Very dangerous, that ring. Turns out the thing belongs to the Enemy. Can't think how Bilbo came to have it."

I was taking a sip of sherry, and I almost dropped the glass. "The Enemy? Bilbo Baggins had a ring that belonged to – him? The Dark Lord of Mordor?"

Too late, Fatty realized what he'd said. He put down his fork and looked from me to Marigold.

"You girls came here to pry that out of me." 

Marigold blushed and hung her head, but I looked him in the eye.

"Yes, we did," I admitted. "Or anyway, to find out why they left Crickhollow, why they went in the Old Forest. Oh Fatty, we had to know! Sam is Marigold's brother, and he's my – I mean –" Suddenly I ran out of words.

Fatty laid his hand on mine. "I know, Rose. Anyone who knows Sam at all, knows how he feels about Rosie Cotton." He sighed, looked at the bottle of sherry, and decided against it. 

"I think I've had enough. More than enough, in fact." He corked the bottle.

"All right, girls. I'll tell you what I know, and I only hope you'll keep the secret better than I have. It's a dangerous secret, you know. Dangerous for you to know it, and dangerous for Sam and the others, if word gets out where they're going."

"We love him, Fatty. We won't tell." My lips felt stiff as I said it, and Marigold nodded, her freckled face solemn.

"Well, you know most of it already. Bilbo got hold of this ring on his journey, and he left it to Frodo. The thing is magic, makes you invisible, and that's all they knew about it until this past spring, when up pops Gandalf with the news that the ring really belongs to the Dark Lord, and what's more, he's looking for it high and low, to get his power back. Gandalf told Frodo to get the ring out of the Shire, take it to Rivendell, to the Elves. So Frodo sells Bag End to give himself an excuse for leaving, and he moves lock, stock and barrel to Crickhollow, but he knew all along he wasn't going to stay there. It was just a dodge, so he could slip out of the Shire quiet-like with nobody the wiser."

"Did Sam know?" I asked.

"Oh yes, Sam knew all about it. Frodo was ready to go by himself, but Gandalf told him nothing doing, take Sam along. What Frodo didn't know, until the last evening at Crickhollow, was that Sam had told Merry and Pippin, and they were going too. Strength in numbers, you see. But Gandalf was supposed go with them, only he never came back to the Shire in time. He told Frodo not to wait past his birthday, but then he didn't come back. Frodo didn't know whether to wait for him or go, but he went, and a lucky thing he did! Those Black Riders were chasing them all the way to Buckland, and they broke into Crickhollow only a night or two after the lads got away. That’s why they went in the Old Forest, to throw off the chase."

He looked again at the bottle of sherry, then shook his head and got up, putting it away in the cupboard. 

"I've had enough," he said again. "Well, girls, now you know as much as I do. I don't know what happened after they went into the Forest, but I hear those Black Riders went through Buckland like a knife through cheese, and rode down the guards at the gate getting away. Between the Old Forest and the Riders, I don't know which is worse. I only hope they've met up with Gandalf by now."

"Gandalf came to see the Gaffer a few days after Sam left," said Marigold. "They talked for a little while, and Gandalf seemed really put out, and then he rode off toward Buckland in a tearing hurry."

Fatty whistled. "Did he, now! Well, that's hopeful, at any rate. Keep your fingers crossed, my dears. If only Gandalf catches up to them, things may turn out all right in spite of everything."  

  Chapter 3:  The Mill

in which Rose sees the shape of things to come

Bad things come in threes, my mother always said.

Sam's disappearance was the first bad thing, and the worst. The next was the news that the Sackville-Bagginses hadn't just  bought Bag End, they'd bought the Mill as well. My brother Nibs went with a cartload of wheat to be ground, and Ted Sandyman turned him away.

"We're closed," Ted told him, smirking all over his ugly face. 

"Closed!" Nibs said.  "We just got done threshing this lot, the first of the harvest, and we need the flour!  What do you mean, closed?"

"Too bad for you, Nibs Cotton. You can take your load out to Frogmorton, I reckon they're still open there.  This mill is closed, orders of the Boss."

"Boss? What Boss?"

"Boss Lotho Sackville-Baggins, the new owner," said Ted, laughing his fool head off.

My Da went right up to Bag End to talk to Lotho, but he got no satisfaction there. He came home shaking his head, more disturbed than I'd ever seen him.

"He's nothing like the other Bagginses, this Mr. Lotho isn't. He wasn't even civil, kept me standing on his front mat while we talked. Mr. Bilbo, now, or Mr. Frodo, they'd a welcome for any hobbit who came to the door – asked you in for a mug of ale and you'd sit in the parlor and discuss a matter like reasonable beings."

He was pacing up and down while my mother rolled out biscuits on the kitchen table.

"Sit down, Tom, do. Rose, get your Da a mug of beer from the cellar. Why is the Mill closed – are they doing repairs?"

I came up from the cellar in time to hear Mum exclaim, "Tearing it down? Why on earth would they tear it down? It's needed here, surely – the only other mill in the area is more than three hours away!"

"Seems it's too old-fashioned for Mr. Lotho Sackville-Baggins. He figures to build a big new mill with all kinds of new-fangled machinery – and he says the price will go up, too, when they get it built. To pay for all his improvements. In the meantime we can drive to Frogmorton, and he's 'Sorry for the inconvenience, Cotton.' He's not half as sorry as I am to find he's bought the place!" 

So Nibs had to drive to the mill in Frogmorton, but Mum wasn't willing he should go alone. He was still in his tweens and inclined to be a little wild – she worried he would be racing other lads on the road, or get to drinking at the inn there.

"You'll have to go with him, Rose, and see he behaves. Your Da can't spare the older boys from the farm work just now, but I can make do with Marigold to help me."

Truth be told, I was glad to get away for a day. No one spoke to me of Sam, except for Marigold, but I knew they all thought he was dead. I wouldn't believe it – I wouldn't! – but it was hard to hold on to that, seeing the sadness in their eyes.

Even Marigold – she was trying hard to keep on hoping, but the Gaffer had given up. He sat in his old chair day after day, smoking his pipe and never saying a word. He wouldn't even stir to put a stick of wood on the fire, so the days Marigold came up to the farm to help out, she went home to a cold fireplace and a silent hole. The Gaffer had never been an affectionate father, quicker to cuff his children than hug them, but it was plain now  how dear he had loved his youngest son.

At least I understood, finally, why Sam hadn’t asked me to marry him. He knew all along they weren’t staying at Crickhollow. And he said he would come back, I reminded myself. He said that.

Nibs and me left before sun-up, for Mum wanted us home that night. By the time we got to the Three Farthing Stone, we began to see other carts on the road, heavily loaded and covered with tarpaulins to protect them from the weather. 

"Should we have covered the wheat?" I asked Nibs. "You think it's going to rain?"

"Don't look like it." He considered the sky, holding up a finger to check the wind. "Not for a day or two, anyhow."

"So why does everyone have their loads covered?"

"I dunno, sis. Maybe they're going a long way, figure they'll hit rain sooner or later."

I tried to remember if there was usually this much traffic. I didn't often get this far from Bywater, but I didn't think I'd ever seen quite so many wagons on the road.

We got to  Frogmorton Mill by mid-morning, and got in line behind four or five other wagons. Balbo Goodbody from Hobbiton was just in front of us, and him and Nibs amused themselves like boys do, arm-wrestling and throwing their knives at a rough target scratched on the wall of the Mill. 

Come time for elevenses, I called them both over and handed out bread and cheese. Balbo had a basket of apples under the front seat of his wagon, and we made a pretty good meal.

"So when are they building the new Mill?" Nibs asked between bites.

Balbo snorted. "Haven't started tearing down the old one yet. If they get the thing built by spring they'll be doing well – it's going to be four times the size of the old one. Big, ugly monster. We'll be coming out here all winter, you watch."

"What's the point, anyway? The old Mill did the job all right; it's not like we're growing a whole lot more wheat."

"Who knows? Lotho Pimple just wants the biggest mill around, I guess. He's buying up a lot of stuff round about Hobbiton."

"What kind of stuff?" I asked.

"The Ivy Bush, for one thing. He bought that, and now the ale they're serving is like swill, all watered down. Can’t hardly drink the stuff. And he's buying up a lot of food, wheat and barley, potatoes, leaf …"

I hid a smile. Trust a man to count leaf as necessary foodstuff! My father would probably agree with him, too – Da liked his pipe as well as anyone. As well as Sam did, I remembered with a pang.

"What on earth is he going to do with it all?" I asked. I wouldn't think of Sam, not now, not where people would see me, if I started crying.

"There goes some of it now," Balbo said, pointing at a tarpaulin-covered cart going by on the road. "He's selling it all outside the Shire, away South somewhere."

Then it was Balbo's turn to have his wheat ground, and Nibs went to help him unload. I wrapped up the remains of our food and watched the carts passing by. By the time we started home, I had counted fourteen carts carrying supplies South, out of the Shire.

Chapter 4:  Bagshot Row

in which the Gaffer leaves his chair

Marigold was at the farm nearly every day for a while. We were busy storing the root crops down cellar and drying apples for winter pies. As soon as it got cold, Da butchered one of the pigs, and we spent a day rendering lard and another day making sausage. Nibs kept the smokehouse fire smoldering, full of hams and sides of bacon and a string of salmon Jolly caught.

The cellar was stuffed with good things, crocks of dried tomatoes and parched corn, barrels of fresh apples and bins of potatoes and boxes of carrots and turnips packed in damp sand. Autumn was the busiest time of year for us, and Marigold was a welcome extra pair of hands. Mum sent her home each evening with a good share of whatever we’d been working on, to keep her and the Gaffer through the winter.

I thought one day to ask her how they were managing without Sam’s wages. She blushed a little.

“Oh, we get by, Rosie. Mr. Frodo made the smial over to the Gaffer before he left, you know—“

“What? I thought it always belonged to your family, Mari! You mean the Bagginses owned it all along?”

“Oh, yes – all of Bagshot Row. But Mr. Frodo made all the smials over to the families that lived in them, last summer, before he sold Bag End. He said he wanted to make sure there wasn’t no confusion about them, that they weren’t included in the sale, you know. The Gaffer’s got the deed and everything, all legal, tucked away in the kitchen cupboard.”

“Well, that’s good, anyhow. At least now you don’t have any rent to pay.”

“Oh, we never did pay rent. The smial was part of the gardener’s wages, from way back when Cousin Holman worked for Mr. Bilbo. But yes, it’s a good thing we own it outright now. Mr. Lotho is nothing like Mr. Frodo was. He’d charge us rent, sure enough, if he could!”

“Nobody likes him much, do they? Da went to see him when they closed the Mill, and I’ve never seen him so angry as he was when he got back.”

“I’m not surprised. He's pretty awful.”

We found out just how awful a week or so later. The Gaffer came trudging up the road with Marigold one morning, moving stiffly and leaning on his stick, but making good time for all that. Mari had to help him up the porch steps, but he shook her off when he reached the door and stood as straight as his bent old back would allow, his face like a thundercloud.

“Good morrow to you, Gaffer, Marigold.”  My mother was puzzled, but welcoming. “Come sit down and have a mug of something, Gaffer. What brings you out so early this morning?”

“I’ve come to see your husband, ma’am. There’s trouble up in Hobbiton, and we need his help.”

“Oh, dear. Rose, go out to the barn, tell your Da he’s wanted in the house. Marigold, get your apron on, dearie, and get your father a bit of breakfast.”

The Gaffer was willing enough to have a bite, but he set down his mug and struggled to his feet when Da came in.

“Sit down, Gaffer, sit down. What can I do for you? Rose says there’s trouble up your way?”

“Aye, sir, trouble enough! It’s that Lotho Pimple, drat his hide!” He paused, chewing the insides of his cheeks, then burst out, “He’s a thief, Mr. Cotton, there’s no two ways about it! He’s out to take Bagshot Row, dig it up and turn it into a sandpit!  ‘Tis no property of his, sir, none at all – Mr. Frodo give us all title to our own smials, legal like, afore he left. But Lotho, he won’t believe that, seemingly, and he’s got half a dozen big Men milling round the place, setting out stakes where he’s planning to dig and all.”

I stared at Marigold, shocked, and she nodded.

“Lotho came yesterday evening,” she whispered to me. “He wouldn’t even come in, he stood outside the door and told the Gaffer to pack up our things and be out the first of next week! The Gaffer went and showed him the paper Mr. Frodo gave him, that says the smial is our own, and Lotho, he just laughed at him and went next door….”

“I comes to you for help, sir. Bag End’s the chief house in Hobbiton; there’s no one in the village with the standing to make Lotho listen to reason, make him abide by law.”

“You did right, Gaffer. Wait till I get my jacket and we’ll go see Odovacar Bolger about this. I’d as soon there was a group of us to call on Lotho, and Mr. Odo’s the leading hobbit around here.”

They went off together, and Mum set Mari and me to tramping out soup beans. We set a big wooden frame on the porch floor and filled it full of the dried-up bean vines the boys had pulled up and stashed in the barn after first frost. Then we tramped around and around in the pile of vines, rubbing our feet over the beans till we rubbed them out of their brittle husks and they sifted down to the bottom of the pile. When we got done, we could scoop up armfuls of the dried vines and load them on the garden cart to be hauled away, and the hard little beans would be lying all over the porch floor for us to pick up and put in cloth bags, hung up in the attic for winter soups.

This was our favorite task in autumn, usually. It was more like play than work, and we marched through the rustling dry stuff singing at the top of our lungs, tripping each other and falling down and rolling around in the pile – we could be as silly as we liked, it all served to rub the beans out of their casings and help the task along. But our hearts weren’t in it today.

“Rose, I just don’t know where we’ll go, if we have to leave Bagshot Row,” Marigold said. She was pacing back and forth, tramping down the vines and rubbing her feet over them automatically, not paying attention, just another job of work to get through.

“You won’t have to leave, Mari! Mr. Frodo fixed that already, giving you title to the place. Mr. Lotho thinks he can push you folks around, but he’ll find out that decent hobbits won’t stand for it. Wait till Mr. Odo gets done with him – Lotho Pimple will find out he’s bit off more than he can chew!”

But he didn’t, though. Da and the others came back in the afternoon, Mr. Odo with them, and settled around our kitchen table. Mari and I ran up and down the cellar stairs bringing them mugs of beer, and helped Mum set out food for them while they talked.

“Well, that’s it then, we’ll have to send for old Will,” said Mr. Odo. “Lotho won’t listen to anyone from around here, but he’ll have to pay heed to the Mayor.”

“I don't much like the looks of those Men he’s got hanging round Bag End,” Da said. “Shifty-eyed bunch, if you ask me. Best warn Will to bring a couple of Shirriffs with him when he goes to see Lotho.”

“Yes, well, I don’t suppose Lotho will set himself against the Mayor, Cotton! He’s already in the wrong, you know – those deeds Frodo Baggins gave the smial-holders are perfectly legal, as I’m sure he must realize. He needs a reminder, is all, that there’s more to the Shire than just Hobbiton. He can’t run roughshod over hobbits just because he’s bought Bag End.”

“Hmm. Well, I hope you’re right, Mr. Odo.”

He didn’t say any more, and the talk turned to the good harvest behind us and the prospects for a cold winter ahead. 

 “It’ll be a bitter one! You ladies had better start right now, knitting some double-thick mittens for the family.” Falco Grubb held himself to be a weather prophet, and he nodded and frowned as if he personally was going to make sure it was a winter of record cold. 

“Never you fear, Falco, we’ve mittens and scarves and good thick sweaters to spare! You just stop by here if you run short.” Mum was teasing him – Falco’s wife Violet was her friend from back when they were girls, and they kept a good-natured competition going on matters of housewifery.

“Well, it’s been a good harvest all round,” Mr. Odo said comfortably. “I’d say the Shire is in good shape to take whatever the winter may throw at us, and come up smiling. We just have to settle this little problem with Lotho, and I’ll get a Quick Post off to Mayor Will first thing in the morning. You tell the Gaffer not to worry, Marigold. We’ll soon have this sorted out.”

Chapter 5:  Ruffians

in which Lotho makes his move and Rose makes a promise

But Mayor Will Whitfoot never made it to Bag End. He came alone after all, in spite of Da’s warning, but in the end I don’t suppose a couple of Shirriffs would’ve helped him any. The ruffians waylaid him just where the East Road meets the road to Bywater, a little west of the Three Farthing Stone. Right in the middle of the Shire. They turned him around and carried him straight back to Michel Delving and locked him up in the old storage tunnels there, what came to be called the Lockholes. He was the first, but he wasn’t the last.

It had been a week, pretty near, since Mr. Odo and them went to call on  Lotho. Only a week, but in that time things had gone from bad to worse. 

The next day after they called on him, Lotho was out on Bywater Road east of Hobbiton with a gang of Men, and they were felling all the trees along the road. A few hobbits who had houses there came out to protest, but Lotho had his answer ready.

“I’ll pay for the damage, my friends! I’ll pay for the damage. We need the wood, I’m afraid. Have to build houses for the hobbits being relocated by the new Hobbiton Sand Works, you know! Can’t stop Progress,  no indeed, but we can’t have anyone left homeless. Just bring your claims to Bag End and I’ll pay for the trees.”

Old Petunia Bunce wasn’t having any, whether he paid her for the wood or not. “Just you leave my trees be, Lotho Sackville-Baggins! You  let folk live in peace in the holes their grand-daddies dug a hundred years agone, and you won’t need to build no new houses for ’em. Sand quarry, my eye! Stuff!”

He turned ugly then, grabbed her by the shoulders and marched her back to her own front door.

“In you go, granny, and mind your manners! You keep a quiet tongue or you’ll be looking for a new house yourself.”

And when her son came out to protest this treatment, one of the ruffians threatened him with an axe.

Early in the week the residents of Bagshot Row were turned out. Lotho was there and a crowd of Men with him, along with Ted Sandyman and  his cronies. When anyone was slow in moving their belongings out of a smial, Ted and his friends just went in and dragged everything out, throwing it in the dirt, never mind what got broken or spoiled. Lotho had a couple of wagons on hand to cart away furniture and such – to the homes of friends or relatives, if people could arrange that, or into “storage” in the cellars of Bag End. But the folks who let their belongings go into the Bag End cellars were sorry later, for it never seemed to be the right time for Mr. Lotho to have their things returned to them.

The Gamgees’ bits of furniture came to the farm, of course. There wasn’t all that much – a few bedsteads and a pile of featherbeds, pillows, and quilts, the old kitchen table and benches, notched and gouged from forty years use and six children, a couple of rocking chairs, a baby cradle. The Gaffer piled their clothes and kitchenware and garden tools all higgledy-piggledy in a wheelbarrow and stumped down the road with it, while Marigold trotted beside him, begging him to let her push it, it was too heavy – oh, please, Da!

But all the food they had put by for the winter, the dried apples and tomatoes, the bacon and sausage and cheese that Mari had helped us to make, and taken her share of it home – Mr. Lotho made them leave it all behind. No one from Bagshot Row was allowed to take their food supplies with them; it was all gathered up by the Men and taken away. And any pipeweed that was found, the Men took that, too.

“For fair distribution later,” Lotho said grandly. “No hobbit will go hungry while I’m in charge, rest assured of that!”

I guess folks were wondering how he'd gotten to be in charge, but he was surrounded by big, rough Men, and no one dared ask. The Gaffer sat in our kitchen muttering about it far into the evening. The houses weren’t built yet, nor even begun, that Lotho had promised for the hobbits of Bagshot Row. The homeless families found shelter where they could, and the Gaffer and Marigold were with us. 

“Oh, hush, now!” my Mum told Mari, when she tried to thank her. “This is as much your home as Bagshot Row, my dear, and I’m pleased to have you and the Gaffer with us - though not pleased at the reason for it, be sure of that! And there’s food enough for all of us and to spare, so don’t trouble your head on that account.”

Nibs gave up his bed to the Gaffer and went to sleep on the settee in the front room, but Mari slept with me, like she did in the summer. She emptied out her bundle on the bed – her clothes and her old rag doll, a piece of lace that had belonged to her mother and that she was saving for her wedding, someday in the future, a few other small treasures. She had another, smaller bundle as well, and she slid the latch shut on the bedroom door before she opened it.

"The Gaffer told me to leave these, but I couldn't do it, Rosie. Even if he never comes back….."

A few shirts, an old hat, a worn pair of breeches, a book, all wrapped in a faded grey cloak. Sam's things.  The rest of his stuff had gone with him to Crickhollow; this was all he had left behind. 

I picked up the book and ran my hands over it - just touching it seemed to bring him close. This was his greatest treasure, I knew that much, and  I was surprised he hadn't taken it with him. But then, he knew when he left that they weren't staying in Buckland. Knew they were going far from the Shire and into danger, most like. So of course he wouldn't take it along. The book was proof, if any proof were needed, that he had intended to come back.

I opened it up and stared at the graceful lettering running down the pages. I couldn't read, and no more could Marigold. Girls of our station didn't learn to read, and often enough the lads didn't, either, though Da had taught my brothers. But I knew many of the stories in this book, for Sam had read them to me. On blustery days when we couldn't walk out, or in the winter when it was too bitter, we had sat by the kitchen fire, snug as bugs, and he had read to me from this book. I handed it back to Mari and turned away, before my tears could stain it.

"I want you to have it, Rose," she said, when I'd got control of myself. "The book and his old cloak. I want you to have them, to remember him by."

It was like Mari, when she had so little, to give the half of it away.

"I don't need nothing to help me remember, Mari. I'm waiting for him to come home."

She wrapped the cloak around the book and pushed them into my hands. "You keep them, Rose. I – I think he'd want for you to have them. If he ever comes home, you can give them back to him."

"If  he comes home, Mari?"

She avoided my eyes. "I want to believe he will, Rose. I want to believe he's still alive…. but….  it's near three months, and there's been no word. No word at all. I'd think we would have heard something by now."

It was a thought that had been sneaking through the back of my own mind, and I hadn't let myself face it. It came hard to hear it said right out loud. I unwrapped the book and slid it under my pillow, shook out the cloak and threw it around my shoulders. It even smelled like Sam, fresh air and pipe-weed and smoke from autumn bonfires, and I pulled it close about me as if it had been his arms.

"Three months or three years, Marigold Gamgee," I said fiercely. "Or ten years! However long it takes, I'll still be waiting."

She came and hugged me, and we went to bed without another word. 

The next day I brushed Sam's cloak till it was clean and soft, and steamed the wrinkles out of it.  I hung it up on my hook by the door.  Mum watched what I was doing, but she

didn't say anything.

That was the day Da hid the pipe-weed.  He said later he didn't know what made him do it;  it wasn't anything he reasoned out, but he went up attic and emptied half a barrel of good leaf into a linen sack and brought it down to the kitchen.

"Sew this closed for me, Rosie-girl," he said, and when I'd done that, he took it in their bedroom and stuffed it in a pillowcase and set it on their bed, just one more pillow among the others.

A few days later – it was after they'd waylaid the Mayor and dragged him off to the Lockholes – four of the ruffians came into the farmyard in the early afternoon.  Da went out to see what they wanted, and Mum and I watched from the window.

He greeted them pleasant enough.  Da always tried to be civil to people, whatever he really thought of them.  It was something he pounded into us youngsters from the time we were little.

"Good manners cost you nothing!  You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar any day of the week  -- just you try and remember that, Jolly!"

It was often enough Jolly he was talking to – my twin had a sharp tongue if you riled him.  It was a nagging worry to all of us, that terrible year, my brother's temper.  There was many a hobbit ended in the Lockholes for speaking up out of turn.

Those Men Lotho brought into the Shire didn't waste their time on being civil.  Even from the window, I could see Da's fists bunch up and his face go hard, and he came to the door and called my brother.

"Nick, go up attic and bring down that barrel of leaf from the north corner."

The ruffians stood waiting, and when Nick  brought the barrel down, Da carried it out to them. 

"Sure that's all you've got, little man?" the leader asked sneeringly.  "This barrel's half empty!"

"There's five pipe-smokers in this household.  We go through a lot of leaf," Da said, truthfully enough.  "You can go up attic and look for yourself, if it suits you."

The Men looked at the kitchen doorway.  They could've gotten in, if they crouched over, but they'd have had a hard time getting up the stairs.  I guess the same thought occurred to them.

"We'll take your word for it this time – but you'd better not try nothing!  The Boss, he means to be obeyed, and don't you forget it!"

They left, and Da came in looking like he'd aged ten years, and slumped down in a chair by the table. 

"Tolman? What was that all about, do you think?"  My mother sounded frightened and I was, too.  What in the Shire was going on, when ruffians barged right into our yard and bullied my father?

Da shook his head.  "I don't know, Lily.  I honestly don't know.  Fix me a bite to eat, won't you?  Then I'm going up to the Big House and have a word with Mr. Odo.  There's something afoot that I don't understand."

But Mr. Odo had no answers for him.  The ruffians had been to his house too, and cleaned out all his pipeweed – the best Southern Star it was, from the Southfarthing – and stole his prize pony besides, that won the trotting race last Mid-Year's Day.  And worst of all, Mr. Fredegar had gone.

"It was the pony," Mr. Odo told Da.  "He tried to reason with that fellow, that ruffian- leader, not to take her.  Well, I ask you, Cotton, what use is a pony to those big brutes?  It's not as if they could ride her!  But this fellow just sneered and said she'd do well enough to haul bricks for Lotho's new Mill.  Our Lightfoot, hauling bricks!  She won't last six months at such work; she's not bred for it!  They were no more than gone when Freddie came out with a change of clothes and some food in his saddlebags and rode off for the Tookland."

"The Tookland?"  Da said.  "What's he hope to do there?"

"Stir up the Thain to stand against Lotho.  He says – and he's right, you know – with those deep holes they've got at the Great Smials, the Tooks can keep these ruffians out of there.  If anyone can hold out against Lotho's devilry, it'll be the Thain."

Mari and I listened in amazement.  Fatty? Fatty Bolger, of all the hobbits in the Shire, was leaving his comfortable home to stir up resistance to the ruffians?

"Will wonders never cease!" my mother said, and that about summed it up.

Chapter 6:  Bad Times

in which there are nightmares

It was a cheerless Yuletide. Falco Grubb's dire predictions back in the autumn looked like coming true after all: winter settled in like a wolf at the door, and fear with it. 

Mayor Will had company in the Lockholes by now. Several hobbits had resisted when the ruffians came to take their pipeweed, and they'd been roughed up and carried off. Near the end of December a large party of Men arrived from away South somewhere. There was more tree-cutting, and they built houses for themselves over by Waymeet. There was a hobbit over there who tried to stop them, and he was for the Lockholes with the others. The houses for the hobbits of Bagshot Row hadn't been started yet, but the Row itself was dug up and destroyed. 

The Gaffer and Marigold were still at the farm. As hard as it was on them, losing their smial, it was a comfort to me having Marigold there. She was a solid, cheery little body, like one of those small grey birds that sits in the snow and sings, regardless of the storm. And she encouraged me to keep on hoping that Sam would return, even if she couldn't quite believe it herself.

I took to wearing Sam's old grey cloak anytime I went outside. It was warm, even if it was faded, and it  felt doubly warm to me simply because it was his. One day when I hung it back on its hook, I noticed a spot of blue on one shoulder. I went to brush it off – a bit of lint, I thought – but it wasn't lint, it was a small, embroidered flower, a forget-me-not. I looked across the kitchen and there was Mari watching me.  I winked at her, and she grinned.

The next day she was busy trimming the Gaffer's hair – he wouldn't let no one else do for him, only her – and I went and embroidered another forget-me-not on the other shoulder. Marigold noticed it a day or so later – she didn't say nothing, but I saw her looking at it when we were in the barn milking – and the next day there was another one, on the hood this time. It got to be a game for us, and more than a game – like a song of hope with no music. I won't forget him, Rosie, the flowers said.  Nor I won't neither, Mari.  Not ever. After a while there were dozens of forget-me-nots scattered all over the cloak.

After the New Year we got word that Lotho had a new title: he wasn't just the Boss, now; he was Chief Shirriff. He appointed himself to the position, naturally. And he decided that there needed to be a whole lot more Shirriffs, too, for him to be giving orders to. Ted Sandyman and his crew volunteered right away.

From what Da said, the nightly talk down at the Green Dragon was getting pretty heated, what with one thing and another. Food was running short in some places, and if anyone had any pipeweed, they weren't talking about it. And then Lotho closed all the inns.

At the Green Dragon, a dozen ruffians came in halfway through the evening, when it was crowded. They ordered their ale and then started picking fights with the other customers, the hobbits, shoving them around, knocking the tankards out of their hands. There were angry words and some real fights broke out, and a couple of hobbits were beat up pretty bad. The next day the Dragon was closed, by order of the Chief, as a Public Nuisance and "not conducive to the peace of the Shire"! 

Over the next weeks word trickled in that it wasn't just the Dragon; the same thing was happening all over the Shire, to all the inns. 

"Too much discussion going on," was my father's verdict. "You let hobbits get to talking about what's bothering them, they might decide to do something about it."

"And what could they do, Tolman, when Lotho's got all these ruffians to back up every wicked thing he does?" my mother said sharply. 

"There's a good many more hobbits than there are ruffians, Lily," he said quietly. "We could drive them right out of the Shire and put a stop to Lotho's nonsense, if we all acted together. But it takes a leader –"

"Not you, Tolman! Don't you go taking that on yourself! That leader you're talking about would more than likely end up in the Lockholes, or worse, and dear knows what would become of his family!"

Da looked at her, at Mari and me. He didn't answer.

The Gaffer was sitting in his old rocker by the kitchen fire, smoking. It was a Sunday night – Da rationed out the pipeweed he had saved, one pipe a week for each of them. 

"Twas a black day when Mr. Frodo sold Bag End," the Gaffer said in his gravelly old voice. "He wouldn't've stood for this kind of goings on, not for a minute." 

Da sighed and filled his own pipe.

"I don't see how he could've prevented it, Gaffer. Lotho could do everything he's been doing, whether he owned Bag End or not. He's got the money, seemingly, to pay these ruffians to be his bully boys, and the ill will to want to push other hobbits around. I'm sorry myself that Frodo Baggins left, and Sam too, but I don't see how things would be any different if they were here."

"They wouldn't have dug up Bagshot Row!" the Gaffer growled.

"Well, that's true," Da agreed. "It's the only thing that'd be different, though. Mr. Frodo's a fine hobbit, but he was always a quiet one. He's no Bandobras Took, to rally the Shire and throw the monsters out."

I held my tongue – there wasn't any call for me to contradict my Da – but I didn't agree. If Sam was here he'd do something, I thought. I didn't know just what, but something.

In February a crowd of the new Shirriffs started going round collecting food. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd known it would be going to families who were running short, but it wasn't. Some went to the ruffians – more and more of them were coming into the Shire and settling all over, cutting trees and building houses wherever they liked, never mind what the hobbits who owned the land or the trees might say. And some of the food, even now when supplies were getting low, was being sent away South in wagons.

Da got word of the collections before they got to us, and he went into action. My brothers loaded half the potatoes from the cellar into burlap sacks and hung them on ropes, down inside the house well. It meant we had to haul water for the house from the second well, out in the barn, and that job fell to Nibs, keeping the kitchen water bucket filled.

Mum and Mari and me sat up most all one night sewing new bed ticks. As fast as we finished them, the boys filled them with grain and soup beans, and we slept on sacks of wheat and barley, oats and beans, underneath our feather beds. It became a joke that we needed a stepstool to get in bed now, our beds were so tall with the food sacks hidden in them.

There was no time to think how to hide any other food before the Shirriffs came. They took all our meat, all the cheese and dried fruit, and two thirds of everything else they found. By the time they got done, there wasn't much left of the bounty that had filled cellar and attic back last autumn. They took every drop of our beer, as well – I think Da felt that more than anything.

But for all that, we were luckier than most. Thanks to my father's quick action, we still had enough to last out the winter without going hungry, no matter if we were thoroughly sick of potatoes and bean soup.  Many folks had far less. We tried to help out where we could, hiding a sack of beans or oatmeal under our cloaks when we went visiting, but you had to be careful who you shared with. There were some who'd repay your kindness by reporting you for hoarding food, and that was a sure ticket to the Lockholes.

Spring was slow to come. There was snow in March and it lay a long time. Even when it began to melt, the days were cold – a nasty, damp cold that seemed to get right into your bones. And then, the middle of the month, the nightmares started.

Not that the whole winter hadn't been one long nightmare, from the day Sam disappeared! But these were dreams, horrible dreams, that came night after night till I dreaded to go to sleep. 

The first one was the worst, and I couldn't even remember it, not really. All I remembered was darkness, thick, suffocating darkness, as if there had never been any light and never would be any, ever. I woke up crying and sobbing and scared poor Mari half to death.

The next night I lay awake a long time, listening to Mari's quiet breathing and reaching under my pillow to touch Sam's book, like it was a charm to shield me from the dark. But I fell asleep at last and dreamed of walking, walking, all night long. I woke up exhausted.

Every night after that I dreamed of walking, and you wouldn't think there was anything frightening about that. But fear filled the dream like a choking fog, and I cringed as I walked, staring around me as if some deadly peril waited just out of sight to pounce on me and eat me up. There was a dull red glow on the horizon, and that terrified me more than anything else.

In the daylight world, things were no better. The houses for the displaced hobbits of Bagshot Row were finished at last, and we loaded the Gamgees' household goods in the farm wagon and carried them to their new home. It was a disheartening sight.

It wasn't just that the houses were new and raw, not painted yet and nothing growing around them. They were rough and badly built, the fireplaces too small to do any proper cooking, and no ovens at all. There was no glass in the windows, just ill-fitting wooden shutters to keep the wind out; there were wide cracks between the floorboards, and the floors were full of splinters.

"Slip-shod," said Da, trying to make the front door close all the way. It was hopeless – the whole building was out of true, and the door scraped on the floor and stuck in its frame. "A strong wind would blow the whole ramshackle mess from here to Buckland, and good riddance to it!"

Lotho was there, preening himself, to see everyone move in, and Da went over to talk to him. I couldn't hear what he said, he kept his voice low, but I heard Lotho's answer – everyone did.

"Nonsense, Cotton, you'll do no such thing! These are fine new houses, miles better than those dirty holes they were living in before, and you'll not be keeping anyone at your place who's not of your own family.  It's a new day in the Shire, man – every family to its own house, and no doubling up."

It looked like Da tried to argue with him, but Lotho brushed him off and turned away, and one of the ruffians slouched over and pointed at us, where we stood watching, a nasty smirk on his face. Da stiffened and glared at him, but then he came back over to us.

"What is it, Da? What did he say?" Jolly asked him.

"Said we can't keep Marigold and the Gaffer with us anymore – you heard him! Every family to its own house, no matter if the house is a clap-trap, rickety shack that I wouldn't house my pigs in!"

"Not him, Da, not old Pimple – I heard what he said right enough! What did that ruffian say to you?"

But Da shook his head and wouldn't answer. We got the Gamgees' bits and pieces set up in their new house, and Mum pulled some small sacks of beans and oatmeal out from under her cloak and gave them to Marigold.

"Hide these away, dearie, and don't let no one know you've got any food. They sent all of you away from the Row without any, so they must be meaning to give you some – but it may not be enough, whatever they give you. You stop by and see me when you can, and I'll have more for you." She caught Mari in a long hug, and turned away with tears in her eyes.

That was the twenty-fifth of March. I didn't pay the date any particular mind at the time, but it came back to me later.

It was hard going to bed that night, without Marigold sharing the little bedroom. The nightmares had wore me down so I hated to sleep, and yet I was so tired. It had been a very silent meal, when we got back from the Gamgees' new house. Mum sat at one end of the table looking frightened but not speaking, and Da sat at the other looking angry, but frightened too.

When I finally lay down, I spread Sam's cloak over me like it was a blanket, or a shield. I don't know if I really thought it would keep the dreams away; it was just a comfort, now his sister wasn't lying next to me in the bed.

That night the dream was different, and it stayed with me for a long time afterward. I was walking again, but the fog was gone and I was surrounded by fire. It came closer and closer, the fire, till I couldn't move at all, and it leaped around me till I thought sure I'd be burned alive. I knew I was in a nightmare and I tried to wake up, but I couldn't pull out of the dream and the fire was hot around me. And then suddenly it wasn't hot. The fire was still there and I was in the middle of it, but it was only pleasantly warm, like a summer breeze, and I walked through it like it was a field of flowers. I walked and walked through the fire, and it was so warm, so nice, after the winter's cold, and I was singing.

And when I woke up, I was still singing. Sam was coming home – I knew it. I knew it!

 I sang while I dressed, and while I built up the kitchen fire for breakfast, and when I went round after breakfast making the beds. I laughed out loud and hugged my parents and my brothers, and they looked at me with pity and worry and tried to make me go lie down and rest. And that just made me laugh all the merrier – never mind, they'd see I was right! Sam was alive – alive! – and he was coming home!

7. The Travellers Return 

in which things get worse before they get better 

At first I waited eagerly, sure that he would come – they would come, for of course Mr. Frodo would be with him! – in a matter of days, or weeks at most. But the weeks slogged on, cold and wet, then warm and rainy as spring arrived at last, and he didn't come, and there was no news, or at least none that was good. Bad news we had aplenty.

The new Mill was built in Hobbiton, a dirty, clanking monster. As promised, the cost for grinding our grain went up. For each barrel of wheat brought to the Mill, Lotho took half the flour.

"It's ruinous! He's left little enough grain to anyone hereabouts, with his 'gathering' – and I have yet to see any 'sharing'!"  Da said. We were sitting round the supper table, and he looked thoughtfully at the crust of bread in his hand. "Less bread, Lily, and more porridge from now on. Make that last run of flour hold out as long as you can. We can't afford to give half our wheat to Lotho. And if we can't afford it, I don't want to think how some others are getting by. Those poor souls from Bagshot Row, for starters." 

I knew they weren't getting by very well. The Gamgees' new house was barely a mile outside of Bywater, but Marigold couldn't come work at the farm anymore. It was against the Rules for her to stay with us, and the Gaffer wouldn't have her walking back and forth. Nor my father wouldn't have allowed it, neither – it wasn't safe for any lass to be walking alone any distance from home, with the ruffians always looking for trouble. 

I'd ridden along with Da when he took the first load of wheat to the new Mill, so's he could drop me off to visit Mari. I was shocked at how thin they'd gotten, her and the Gaffer both.

"There isn't much to eat," she confirmed. "We were lucky your Mum gave us what she did, when we moved in. What Lotho gave us, you could make maybe a thin breakfast and a light supper, that's all. I'd like to know what he did with all the good food he took from us – gave it all to those thieving ruffians, I suppose!"

I'd brought soup beans and oatmeal with me, and she whisked them into hiding straightaway. 

"Did you hear about Fatty?" she whispered.

"No, we don't get much news, and I guess Da don't tell us half what he hears, neither, not wanting to scare us. What about Fatty?"

"He was leading a band of rebels, Rose – can you imagine?  Fatty Bolger?  I never thought I'd see the day!  They were stopping ruffians when they found little groups of them on the Road – holding them at arrow-point and taking their money and stuff, and giving it to hobbits who were hard up. They had holes over in the Brockenbores by Scary – I guess they thought they were pretty safe up there, like the Tooks in Great Smials. But the ruffians came and smoked 'em out. He's in the Lockholes now, with any of his band that didn't get away."

Poor Fatty – poor, food-loving, comfort-loving Fatty!  I hated to think of him in the Lockholes. But the idea of him leading a band of rebels – I had to laugh, the thought was so preposterous. Fatty Bolger, of all people in the world!

"I heard he went off to try and rouse the Thain – I guess he couldn't do it," I said.

Marigold stared at me. "You really don't get much news, do you?  The Thain hasn't let the ruffians in the Tookland at all – all the Tooks who can handle a bow are out patrolling, day and night. And especially since they took Fatty – the Thain won't let that happen at the Smials; they'll never get close enough to smoke the Tooks out! But Fatty wasn't satisfied just to keep them out of the Tookland – he wanted to take back the whole Shire! Only he never could get enough hobbits to stand with him."

I could only shake my head, remembering our visit to Fatty back when Sam first disappeared. It had been so easy to distract him with good food and drink, till he told us secrets he had never meant to tell. He hadn't struck me much like a hero, but it seemed there was more to Fredegar Bolger than met the eye.

"I'll bet Lotho got a shock, when he found out who was leading those rebels," I said, and I was proud of Fatty, but sorry for him too.  For what good had it done, in the end? He was in the Lockholes now.

When Sam gets home, he'll do something, I thought. And then I was afraid – would Sam end up in the Lockholes too?

The summer dragged along. It was harder and harder to get any news – with the inns all closed, there was no place for hobbits to gather and talk about what was going on. Most everyone stayed close to home and minded their own business. You never knew if anything you said might get reported back to the "Chief," so you kept a quiet tongue with anyone but close kin.

My brother Tom started driving the pony cart out on Sundays and bringing Mari and the Gaffer back for noon dinner. I'd told Mum how thin they were, and she made up her mind she was going to give them one good meal a week, anyhow.

"And Lotho Pimple can like it -- or he can go jump down the Bag End well, I don't care which!" she said fiercely.

Da looked worried at first, but then he said, "Right you are, Lily! If Lotho's upset about it, he can come to dinner too – though I won't promise what kind of mushrooms are in the pie!"   

It was good to see Marigold again, but it was no use talking to her about Sam, nor about the dream I'd had. 

"He's not coming back, Rosie. We'll just have to face it. A dream doesn't prove anything."

I wanted to argue, but she was so thin and pale looking, I didn't have the heart. There was no garden spot by their new house, and it wasn't safe for her to get out and walk – she was pretty much stuck in that horrible, bare little house. I just hugged her, thinking all the time – you'll see, Mari!  He's coming, he is, but I sure wish he'd hurry up about it!  

And then it was autumn again, but this year there was little in the cellar. The harvest had been good enough, but as fast as we could gather it in, the ruffians came and took it from us. It was the same for everyone, whether a big farm like ours or the littlest garden – anything a hobbit had, one of the Men would come and take it away.

We hid what we could, of course. Our beds were tall again with sacks of grain hidden under the featherbeds – we hid food every place we could think of, but we had to let them take the lion’s share of it. We didn’t want them to realize we were holding some back, and start searching.

Da's pillowcase of pipeweed was all gone, and there was no more to be had for love nor money. Rumor whispered that there'd been a good crop of it, down in the Southfarthing, but it was all shipped away and not a leaf of it came to Bywater, unless it was in the pockets of the ruffians – and they weren't sharing, for all Pimple's talk of "fair distribution".

Worst of all, in September Sharkey came. We never actually saw him until the very end, but the ruffians bragged of him all the time, and they got  meaner and more hateful than ever, if that was possible.  They even arrested Mistress Lobelia and dragged her off to the Lockholes – Lotho’s mother, no less!  You’d think he would have stopped that, but maybe he was afraid of Sharkey like everybody else.

She had more spunk than he did, for we heard she went after those ruffians with her umbrella before they could bundle her off.  Even with everything so terrible, we had to laugh at that!

We were taking our wheat out to Frogmorton again – the new Mill in Hobbiton wasn't grinding wheat any more. It was running all the time, clanking away day and night, sending up a cloud of evil-smelling smoke and fouling the Water, my Da said, killing all the fish. But no onr seemed to know what it was doing. 

There was a new Mill at Frogmorton now -- owned by Lotho, needless to say. Da wouldn't let me go with him, nor Nibs either. He went himself and took my older brother Tom.

"It's not hobbits running that Mill, it's some of those ruffians," he explained over supper the night before. "I don't want you young ones out there, nor I don't want you, Jolly – you're too quick to talk back. I wouldn't go near the place myself, but we have to have some flour. I won't make a second trip, though. It isn't worth the risk, nor it isn't worth the price Pimple's charging either. You'll have to go easy on the flour, Lily."

He left before dawn, and he was back before we went to bed. He left Tom to bed down the pony and put away the flour, and called us all in the kitchen.

"I've got something to tell you, and I want you to listen for all you're worth."  He looked grim, frightened and angry both at once. "I want you to stay close at home, all of you, and stay out of the way of those Men! They've started killing hobbits, not just sending them to the Lockholes."

My mother blanched. "Killing?" 

"They've been shooting with arrows, I don't know why. I don't know – this thing gets worse and worse, and something will have to be done to bring an end to it. But what we can do, with them settled in all over the Shire – !"  He sighed. "At any rate, you've got to stay out of their way, just as if they were wild animals. There's no safety for any hobbit anywhere around them. Jolly, that means you too, do you understand me?  You especially!"

Fear settled on the house, and no one smiled anymore. Sunday came, but Da wouldn't let Tom take the cart for the Gaffer and Marigold. 

"I'll take them some supplies," he said. "I'll go on foot, after sundown. Better than taking the pony out on the Road in the middle of the day."

That was towards the end of October. And then the first of November I woke up singing again! Just like in the spring, the happiness bubbled up, and I fair danced around the kitchen as we made breakfast.

"Rose," my Mum said, "I'm glad to see you happy and all, but I'm sorry to say, lass, there ain't no reason for it. Things are about as bad as they could be, and there's nothing to sing about that I can see."

"But there is, Mum! Sam's coming home -- I can feel it!"

She swung the pot of porridge away from the fire and took me in her arms.

"Rosie…  he's not. He's not! He's gone, lassie, and he'll not come back no more. I know you loved him, we all loved him, but you got to let him go, dearie."

"Mum, he isn't dead! He's coming home!"

"That's what you said last spring, remember?" She sighed. "You go on back to bed, see if you can sleep some more. These bad times, it's hard to face up to things, I know. But you got to keep your grip on what's real and -- what isn't. Go on, Rosie, back to bed with you."

I went. It was true, I'd been expecting him since the spring. So who was right, my dream or everybody else?  Even Marigold was sure, now, that Sam was dead. I was the only one still waiting for him.

Three months or three years, I remembered. Or ten years. I'll still be waiting. That's what I told Mari last year.

I went and got his cloak off the hook in the kitchen. The family was all around the table and they looked at me, but no one said anything. I got a mug of tea and went and sat in the old rocker in the front room, sewing more little blue flowers on the dark wool of the cloak. 

And that night he came home. Just like I told Mari he would, he came riding into the farmyard on a pony. He said, "Hullo, Rosie," just like he hadn't been gone for more than a year, and the whole Shire gone to ruin with him gone.

"You haven't hurried, have you?" I said.

8:  Accommodations

in which there's a lot of give and take in love – and friendship

"I knew things would come right when you got back!"

Everyone else was round the kitchen table, finishing a late supper and talking over the events of the day. The ruffians were routed, many dead and the rest of them on the run, and Sharkey was dead too, struck down in the end by his own servant. Sam shuddered as he described the scene to me. He was lying on the old leather settee in the front room, his head in my lap. 

"It was an ugly thing to see, Rosie. Not but what he deserved it! Even right at the end he tried to stab Mr. Frodo – it's a mercy he had that mithril shirt on! I near run my sword through him then and there, but Frodo, he let him go. I've a long ways to go before I'm as merciful as Mr. Frodo."

He closed his eyes, and I trailed my fingertips softly over his eyelids.  The only light in the room was the glow from the fireplace, and the voices from the kitchen were a pleasant hum in the background.

"'It wasn't you he was trying to kill, Sam. Maybe Mr. Frodo wouldn't've been so merciful, if it was you Sharkey tried to stab. Easier to forgive what's done to me, than what's done to someone I love."

He nodded without opening his eyes. "You're right, lass. I look at the Gaffer and Marigold, so thin as they are, and I don't know what I'd do to Lotho, if Sharkey hadn't done it already. It's a hard homecoming, finding the Shire in such a state."

"It's been a hard year, Sam. They all thought you were dead."

He looked up into my eyes. "And you didn't?"

"I told you – I've been expecting you ever since the spring. I knew you were coming -- I just didn't think it would take you so long."

"I might've never come back, Rosie. It looked like that for awhile – I was surprised myself to wake up and find I wasn't dead!"

I couldn't answer him. The tears welled up in my eyes and I turned my head away so he wouldn't see. He did, though. He sat up sudden and the next thing I knew, I was on his lap and half-crushed in his hug.

"Rosie, oh Rosie…  It'll take a bit of clearing up, the Shire and all, before we can be wed, lass. Will you wait for me a little longer?"

"Just a little, Sam. You've wasted a year already, you know," I teased him.

He pulled away and stared at me, shocked, and I laughed through my tears. "Oh, Rosie,” he said again, shaking his head. “Come on, let's go outside a bit, look at the stars."

We passed through the kitchen to get our cloaks, and I saw Mr. Frodo watching us from the corner of his eye. I thought he looked pleased. 

Sam's cloak was a beautiful thing, the softest weave I ever saw, and to this day I couldn't tell you what color it is – seems like it's always changing, like a stream rippling in the sunshine. But he was looking at my cloak, too, rubbing it between his fingers and examining the flowers embroidered on it.

"It's my old one that I left at home, isn't it?"

"Yes – Mari gave it to me, to remember you by."

He wrapped it around me and pulled the hood up over my hair, then touched one of the flowers with his finger.

"Forget-me-nots," he said softly.

It was chilly outside, and the stars were so bright and close, seemed like you could reach up and pick one, like an apple off the tree, and carry it for a lantern. We walked up the lane to the road and sat side by side on the pasture fence. He put his arm round me and I leaned against him.

"You do understand, Rosie? Why I had to go with him? I couldn't let him go alone!"

"I know that, Sam. But it's over now, isn't it? You can stay with me?"

"It's over. The Quest is over. We can stay home now, all of us, home where we belong. I'll never leave you again, Rosie."

It took longer than I'd hoped, repairing the damage the ruffians had done. Sam stayed at the farm till the new holes were finished in Bagshot Row – New Row, they call it now. Even then he was away quite a bit, planting trees in other parts of the Shire. When he was home, he was up in Hobbiton most days.

Bag End was in a terrible state, and it took several months to put it right. I caught on pretty soon that I'd see more of Sam if I was up there, and we started walking up together each morning. I scrubbed and polished and sewed new covers for the furniture, while he and the other fellows repaired what was broken and repainted all the rooms.  As soon as the weather warmed, he started replanting the garden.

New Row was finished first, and Sam and his family moved back into No. 3, but Mr. Frodo was still at the farm. He was an easy guest, spending most of his time writing at a table my brothers had carried into the front room for him. Mr. Merry drove over from Crickhollow with a load of his books, and when he wasn't writing he mostly sat before the fire with a fur robe over his knees, reading.

An easy guest, quiet and kind, and yet it wasn't entirely comfortable having him around. He didn't talk much even at mealtimes, though he always praised the food politely and had a good appetite. I tried to be friendly, knowing how Sam loved him, but I couldn’t find much to say to him.

 I had always been shy of Frodo Baggins, even before they went away. He was so truly a gentlehobbit, not like Fatty Bolger, who seemed much the same sort as my father or brothers, for all we called him Mr. Fredegar to his face. Mr. Frodo was different, even in the old days.

Since they came back, he was more than different. Courteous, soft-voiced, a little sad – yet even Sharkey couldn't stand up to him, and as it turned out, Sharkey had been a powerful wizard. But for all of that, when Mr. Frodo told him to go, he went – he didn't stay around to argue with Frodo! Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, too – tall and lordly they were, with their mail shirts and their helmets – folk were already calling Mr. Merry “the Magnificent”. But it seemed like even they looked for Mr. Frodo to tell them what was what. And there he was, so thin and sort of tired-looking, telling them.

In my heart of hearts, he right out scared me. I was relieved when Bag End was finished and he finally went home.

And then, a week before the wedding, Sam told me we'd be coming to Bag End to live with Frodo. We were in the kitchen doing the washing up, and I was that startled, I squeezed too hard on a wine glass and it broke in my hand. I cried out, my hand bleeding like sixty in the warm water, and Sam grabbed my arm.

"Here, Rosie, sit down and let me make sure there's no bits of glass still in your hand! Hold still now, lass -- hush, hush, I know it hurts.  Just let me get the glass out, that's my girl, and we'll get you bandaged up as good as new."

After my first cry I hadn't made a sound, and I was sitting quiet as a mouse, but he kept hushing me and crooning over me while he picked splinters of glass out of my hand, till I laughed in spite of the pain.

"Sam, you goose, you'll make a wonderful father, that's plain as plain.  Any time one of our children scrapes a knee, I'll send them to you to be patched up. Have you been tending the wounded on your travels, on top of everything else?"

He blushed and grinned. "I'd sound a rare fool on a battlefield, wouldn't I?  No, I didn't have the care of no one but Mr. Frodo, and there was little enough I could do for his wounds, more's the pity. I just can't bear to see you hurt, Rosie. Hold tight, now, I think there’s some rolls of bandage in the cupboard."

He washed and I dried after that, and I was clumsy enough with the enormous bandage he'd tied around my hand. 

"I thought we were going to live with your Gaffer, Sam -- just come up here to work, is all. You never used to live at Bag End before you went away."

"No, I didn't, and that's a fact." He let the water out of the sink. "Let the rest of those drip dry, it won't hurt 'em."

He sat down and pulled me onto his lap, and I nestled against him.

"Mr. Frodo asked particular for us to come and live here, lass. I'm thinking he don't want to live alone now. He had a cruel time, Rosie, a terrible cruel time. It was more than just the wounds, and the hunger, and hiding all the time, thinking any day we’d be caught and  killed –  he had the Ring, you see. Those last few weeks, he was near out of his mind. I don't think he's got over it even yet."

"Poor Mr. Frodo," I said, but I'm afraid I was really thinking, poor Rosie. Taking care of Bag End and doing the cooking, I could handle that. I'd known that would be part of being married to Sam. But to live here all the time, and not have no home of our own at all – that was something else again.

"Rosie? You won't mind living at Bag End, will you? I want you to be happy, lass."

He sounded worried, and I wrapped my arms around him. "I'll be happy wherever we can be together, Sam. That's all that really matters."

And it was. After the long year of dread and misery, of making myself believe in spite of everything that he was alive, that he'd come home -- and all the while the Shire was overrun and fear grew on every side – what matter where we lived?  Just being with Sam was good enough for me. I could get used to Mr. Frodo.

A week later we were wed. We had an outdoor wedding -- nothing would satisfy Sam but to be married in the Party Field, in front of  the new little sapling  he had planted in place of the lost Party Tree. It was up to his chin that April, covered with golden blossoms. A mallorn, he called it, and promised that one day it would be larger and finer than the old Tree had ever been. He'd seen mallorns in the Elvish country, he said.

Mr. Frodo heard our vows. I’d forgotten that of course he would; he was Acting Mayor until Will Whitfoot recovered from his time in the Lockholes. I didn’t have much attention to spare for Frodo, not on my wedding day! But he sat at the wedding table with us and gave a toast, and I remember thinking he looked near as happy as Sam.

We moved into Bag End the next day, and I got my first surprise when I went to call Mr. Frodo to dinner. He was in his study, writing in a big red book. 

"Have you called Sam yet, Rose?" 

"Not yet, Mr. Frodo. I wanted to get you served first, sir. Sam and I will have our dinner afterward."

"That sounds like a lonely dinner for poor old Frodo," he said. He smiled up at me from where he sat, and I think his smile would have melted the heart of an orc. "Set two more places, won't you, Rose?  I'll call Sam -- I think he's digging up the vegetable patch."

The next thing I knew I was sitting down to dinner in the big dining room, with Frodo at the head of the table and Sam across from me.  Sam raised his eyebrows at me in silent question and I shrugged, but Mr. Frodo reached across the table and took our hands.

"Sam, we've eaten too many thin meals together hiding under a bush, to stand on ceremony now. Would you really leave me all by myself in the dining room, while you and Rose sit cozy and warm by the kitchen fire?"

Sam's ears burned red and he began to stutter. "Well, Mr. Frodo – it's only right, sir – you being Master of Bag End -- you ought to be served proper in the dining room and all." 

"I can't come and eat in the kitchen with you and Rose, then?"

"Well, sir, it wouldn't hardly be proper. You're the Master, Mr. Frodo."

"Ah, well, I suppose you're right, Sam." He sighed and shook his head. "As Master of Bag End, then, I'll be requiring you and Rose to keep me company in the dining room. This is far too big a table for one lonesome old hobbit."

He turned to me, and he was as polite as ever a girl could wish, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

"Will you do me the honor to have dinner with me, Mistress Rose? I believe your good husband will be joining us, so it's quite proper."

I had to laugh, he looked at me so comical, and that broke the ice between us. After that first night, Mr. Frodo took all his meals with us, unless he was working hard on his book and asked me to bring his lunch into the study.

 At breakfast he came into the kitchen and claimed the seat closest to the fire, for he always seemed to feel the cold. He was very quiet in the mornings, warming his hands on his mug of tea, his eyes shadowed as if he didn't sleep well. But at dinner he and Sam talked long about their travels, comparing their memories of different things, for Mr. Frodo was writing it all down in his red book. I listened to them in wonder, and sometimes horror – as bad as we thought things were in the Shire, the year they were away, still we had seen nothing like the terrors they described.

Chapter 9: Family

in which Frodo gives in, and the Gamgees try to give him what he wants

When it was just the three of us at Bag End, we took our meals together. But when company came, no matter if it was just Mr. Merry or Mr. Pippin, we served Mr. Frodo and his guests by themselves, and Sam and I ate in the kitchen. Sam was adamant about that. He and Mr. Frodo had it out together the first time Mr. Merry came to call after our wedding.

"Sam, it's Merry, for heaven's sake! You don't think Merry is going to complain about sitting down to dinner with you and Rose – you sat at table together in Rivendell, to say nothing of all the journey after!"

"I don't say Mr. Merry would complain. I know he wouldn't, as sweet-tempered a hobbit as he always was. But it ain't what's proper, Mr. Frodo, and you know it. I'm your manservant and your gardener, and proud to be, and Rose is your housekeeper. And when company comes our place is in the kitchen."

Sam was that earnest, Mr. Frodo couldn't help but listen.

"You've been my best friend since I was a little lad, Mr. Frodo, and you'll never lack a friend so long as I live. It's not that. But you're my Master, too, and when company comes, I want them to see that I honor you. I don't want no one to think I'm presuming on friendship so's to not show you the proper respect."

Mr. Frodo gave in after that – though I heard him later that evening explaining to Mr. Merry that Sam had refused to eat with them, and why. Seemed like Mr. Frodo worried what people thought, too; only he was afraid Mr. Merry would think him ungrateful, treating Sam like a servant after Sam saved his life in Mordor.

I was bringing them some beer from the barrel in the cellar when I heard Mr. Frodo telling him about it, and I admit I hid behind the door and waited to hear what Mr. Merry would answer.

He laughed like it was all a good joke. "Frodo, my dear ass, of course Sam wants to treat you as the Master of Bag End. Think about it, cousin – you count Aragorn as your friend, but would you sit down in his presence, if he were standing?"

"Of course not, Merry, but he's the King! It's not the same thing at all."

"To Sam it's exactly the same thing. If the truth were known, Sam probably ranks you higher than Aragorn. The only thing that surprises me is that you prevailed on him to sit down and eat with you when you're alone here together. You must have been very persuasive."

I heard Mr. Frodo chuckle. "I appealed to his pity – poor old Frodo all alone in the dining room, while he cuddled up by the kitchen fire with his pretty new bride."

"Frodo! For shame!" Mr. Merry seemed to be taken by a coughing fit.

"Merry, I haven't had a real family since I was twelve. It's something I long for, the home life, the family meals, the warmth and laughter…."

"So you're going to make yourself part of Sam's family? Why not get married yourself?"

"No! I won't ask any lass to take that risk. After the Ring – I don't know what it may have done to me, my mind or my body. I shall never marry. But if Sam and Rose don't mind having me around as a sort of bachelor uncle…."

I didn't stay to hear no more. I slipped away as quiet as I could and took their mugs back to the kitchen. I told Sam I wasn' t feeling just so, and let him take their beer in to them, and I went back in our bedroom and cried. Poor Mr. Frodo.

I told Sam about it a day or two later, and the tears came to his eyes, too.

"There's not a lass in the Shire but would be lucky to have him, but if he's made up his mind not to marry, he never will. We'll just have to be family to him, Rosie. He's better than a brother to me anyhow, always has been."

"We'll name our first baby for him," I said, and got the best hug I'd had all week.

After that I tried to forget that he was Mr. Frodo Baggins, the Master of Bag End, and treat him like family. It came hard at first.

It wasn't no trouble living with him. He sat in his study reading, or writing in his big book, or sometimes he went out walking in the countryside, down the little lanes where the houses are far apart, or into the woods. When he got hungry he'd show up in the kitchen, brew himself a pot of tea and cut some bread and butter to take back to the study.

The first time he wandered into the kitchen like that, I fussed over him, trying to make him sit down and let me wait on him. He turned the tables on me, though – he pulled out a chair and made me sit in it, while he went about making the tea. When it finished brewing, he poured a cup for me and put cream in it, before he set the cream pot on the tray to carry it away. Then he looked down at me with that gentle smile of his.

"You cook three good meals a day, Rose, four if you count our afternoon tea. If I want something in between, I'm well able to find it for myself. I lived here a good many years alone, you know!"

To be honest, I might have resented it a little – a lass gets a bit possessive about her kitchen, even if it isn't properly speaking her own house – but his smile made it all right.

And it's family he wants, I reminded myself. Could I pretend he was Sam's uncle, like – someone I'd show respect for, but affection, too, and family feeling?

Before long I got used to him poking around the kitchen looking for a snack. I just kept on with my work and didn't pay him any mind, but I made sure there were always some seedcakes in the pantry, which I'd noticed he specially liked, and a good hunk of sharp cheese nearby.

Sam was feeling his way too. At first he tried to get Mr. Frodo to walk down to the pub with him in the evening, and he did go a few times. After awhile, though, seemed like he just wanted to stay home.

"You go on, Sam," he'd say. "I'm not in the mood for all that noise and commotion. I'll have a quiet smoke out in the garden and get back to my book."

Pretty soon Sam quit asking, and then he quit going himself.

"I don't enjoy it nohow," he told me, "thinking of him prowling round the garden alone, or sitting there at his desk hashing through all them dark memories. I know Mr. Bilbo told him to write it all down, but they're terrible memories, Rosie. It's not good for him to dwell on them like he does."

So Sam stayed home and joined Frodo in the garden for a comfortable smoke after dinner. Then he came in and dried the dishes for me, and he brought Mr. Frodo along with him.

"Will you read to us some, Mr. Frodo?” he asked one night. “I always did like hearing you read, and there's a lot I still don't rightly understand, about the Men of the West and all that."

Oh my clever Sam, he knew what he was about! He knew Mr. Frodo's passion for making sure we understood all the history of the Shire and how it connected to the old Kings and the new Kingdom that Elessar had restored. He might have rather listened to tales of the Elves himself, but teaching us history would keep Frodo in the bright kitchen and away from his own dark memories, so history it was.

One night Mr. Frodo begged off reading, saying he had a sore throat.

"But I'll challenge you to a game of kings*, Sam. Do you remember when I taught you to play?"

"Oh, don't I! Nor I haven't forgot what my Gaffer had to say about it, neither, when he saw you teaching me! Never had much patience with games, my Gaffer. 'Reading ain't bad enough, now you got to be messing about with little bits of wood! Throw 'em on the fire, Sam, and come get some work done!'"

They laughed at the memory, and Mr. Frodo dug the game pieces out from the cupboard by the back door, while I set a cup of sage tea steeping for his throat.

That was a merry evening! Sam lost the first game, but he won the next.

"Best two out of three," said Mr. Frodo, "and the winner teaches Rose."

Sam won that one too, and I wrapped a warmed scarf round Mr. Frodo's throat and gave him his tea, then settled down for Sam to teach me the game.

I hadn't played games much, not since Marigold and I were little lasses playing jackstones on the smooth floor of the barn. It was fun, even when Sam turned all his men to kings and gobbled up my pieces. I hadn't expected to win, so I didn't mind, but Mr. Frodo rallied him.

"You are merciless, Sam Gamgee, absolutely merciless. Mopping up your little bride like that, you ought to be ashamed! But I have the cure for that, sir, to cut you down to size and teach you humility. Wait right here!"

He disappeared down the passage and returned a moment later with Mr. Bilbo's inlaid chessboard, balancing the carved figures of white and red stone.

"Now, Master Gamgee, come and learn the game of kings. We'll see if you clear the board quite so fast when you play chess!"

I watched while he taught Sam, and my word, but there was a lot to remember! In after years Sam got to be a good chess player, and he taught our children and tried to teach me, not too successfully in my case. But that first evening he was in a muddle trying to remember how each piece was supposed to move, and Mr. Frodo was well revenged for his defeat at kings.

There was many another evening we played, and I got so I could beat Mr. Frodo at kings once in a while, though I never beat Sam. But that first night shines in my memory as something special – it really felt like family that night, and it seemed like the shadows could be pushed away for good and happiness come to stay, for all of us.

*kings - the Shire term for checkers

Chapter 10: Questions and Answers

in which Rosie is sorry she asked

Sam was still away quite a bit in different parts of the Shire, helping set right the damage done by the ruffians. The inns and that had opened again right after the Battle, but even this spring there was a lot of work still to be done – Sharkey's men had amused themselves smashing things, tearing up orchards, anything they could destroy. There were plenty of willing helpers, but that was part of the problem – they kept getting in each other's way without someone to oversee the work. So Sam got into it, going round the Shire making sure they had the materials they needed at each job, and that someone reliable was in charge. It turned out he had a knack for getting things organized and making the work go smooth. And of course he was still planting trees.

Sometimes he'd be gone three or four days at a time, and it got lonely then. Mr. Frodo came up from the cellar one evening with a mug of beer, and found me crying into the sink as I did the washing up.

"Rose?"

I sniffled, ashamed to be caught acting so silly – Sam was only out to Scary, for pity's sake, not in Gondor! I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, wondering if I could pretend I had a cold.

"You're missing Sam, aren't you? Poor lass, what a honeymoon you're having! Bag End can be a gloomy hole when you're all alone at nightfall – that's why I wanted you and Sam here with me! Wait, Rose, I've got something that might cheer you up."

He hurried out of the kitchen and came back carrying a book, not the history he'd been reading to us from, but his red book he was always writing in.

"The whole first part of this is Bilbo's diary of his journey. I know Sam has told you some of it, but I don't think even Sam ever heard how it all began, and it's an amusing story."

So I finished the dishes and set the bread sponge for the next day, while Mr. Frodo read to me how the Dwarves came to tea at Bag End, and old Mr. Bilbo got hired on as their Professional Burglar, whether he would or no. I laughed till the tears ran down my face – what a trick Gandalf had played on the poor bewildered hobbit! After that, any evening that Sam had to be away, Mr. Frodo sat by the kitchen fire and read to me from Bilbo's diary.

One night Marigold was there with us – the strawberries were just getting ripe, and she'd come to spend a few days helping me make preserves. Sam was away again and Mr. Frodo was reading the story of Bilbo's meeting with Gollum, and how he found the Ring.

"It's funny," I said, when he closed the book, "but Mr. Bilbo's adventures aren't near as frightening to hear about as yours and Sam's, and yet he went through all kinds of dangers, too. I wonder why?"

"Well, Mr. Bilbo didn't go to Mordor!" said Marigold.

We all laughed at that, even Mr. Frodo. He had a nice laugh, and I remember wishing we heard it more often.

"No, Marigold, he didn't. And I wouldn't wish him there, but if he had gone, he might have done better than I did. Bilbo had a way of turning danger on its head that was all his own – the Dark Lord himself might have found him slippery to handle!"

"But it's more than that," I said, still thinking it out. "I mean, if Mr. Bilbo hadn't come back, it would have been terrible – but the Shire would have gone on just the same. But if you and Sam hadn't come back –" I hugged myself, shuddering. It didn't bear thinking about, and I was sorry I'd brought up the subject.

"If they hadn't come back, the Shire would have been destroyed," Marigold said. "It wouldn't have just been us, grieving for Sam – and you, too, of course, Mr. Frodo. It would have been the whole Shire ruined."

"It might have been even more than that. If the Quest had failed, it would have been all of Middle Earth fallen into darkness, and the Dark Lord over all. There was more at stake this time, than there was when Bilbo went adventuring. There was everything at stake."

Something in his voice struck me, as if his customary gentleness was a curtain suddenly drawn back, and behind it was passionate intensity.

"That's why I'm writing it all down, so we won't forget, in a few generations, how near we came to losing it all. We hobbits have forgotten too much of our history, but we need to remember this."

"But Mr. Frodo," I protested, "the Dark Lord is gone! You destroyed the Ring, Sharkey is dead – I don't mean we shouldn't remember, but you sound as if you expect it to start all over again!"

"I know, Rose. That's what everyone thinks. I saw the Gaffer when I was out walking today, and he shook my hand as if I were running for election. 'All's well as ends better, Mr. Baggins,' he said. 'All's well as ends better!'"

He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Only I keep remembering what Gandalf told me long ago. However many times the Shadow is defeated, it always takes another shape and grows again."

He was sitting with his elbows on the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around his mug. My eyes went to his scarred right hand, the gap of his missing finger. That hand of his had made me cringe when I first saw it, but I'd got used to it now. Suddenly I felt tears stinging my eyes: I guessed things hadn't "ended better" for Mr. Frodo.

"There's something I don't understand," Marigold said into the silence. "Captain Merry and Captain Pippin, now, they still look like warriors, like they're ready for a battle any time. You know, riding around with their shields and swords, wearing those mail shirts – but you and Sam, you don't never wear your swords anymore, and you dress just like you always did."

I had never thought to wonder about that, but she was right. True enough, Sam would find it inconvenient wearing chain mail, digging and planting like he did – and a sword hanging at his belt would be sure to get in his way! But Mr. Frodo's mithril shirt was folded away in a drawer, and his sword was hanging over the mantel in the parlor. And they were still at Bag End only because Sam had protested so, when Frodo wanted to send them to the Mathom House in Michel Delving.

"You keep them here where you can get at 'em if you need 'em, Mr.Frodo! There's any number of chances in this world, and who'd a thought we'd see battle right here in the Shire, or a murderer waiting for us at Bag End! I've never been so relieved in my life as I was when that knife of Sharkey's slid off your mail like it did."

Frodo had smiled and given in, but he never wore the mithril shirt, and I dusted the sword every week with a lambs-wool duster, when I cleaned the parlor. It hadn't been down since Sam hung it there.

He smiled at Marigold now, and there was tenderness in his face. "My unquenchable cousins! I'm not sure why Merry and Pippin are still wearing chain mail, except that they're young and full of life and spirit, and they're not quite ready to let go of their great adventure. And of course it goes over well with the lasses; I'm sure that doesn't hurt! There's no other reason for it at present, that I know of. Sam may be right, though, that it's wise to keep our swords close at hand, however peaceful things may seem."

He got up and set his mug in the sink, then ducked into the pantry and came out carrying the half of a rhubarb pie that had been left from dinner.

"Do you lasses want to share this with me? No?" We shook our heads and he settled down to finish it off, right out of the pan. I thought, not for the first time, that for all his thinness Mr. Frodo had a healthy appetite.

"What I don't understand, and maybe you can explain to me," he said between bites, "is how Lotho got such a hold on the Shire. It sounds as if we'd no more than gone, when he began buying up everything he could get his hands on and throwing his weight around. Why didn't somebody stop him, right in the beginning?"

I'd heard my Da ask that question often enough at the dinner table, that whole dark year of the Troubles. Asking himself, he was, for none of us had an answer for him. How had we gotten to such a pass, that an upstart like Lotho Pimple, not even the rightful Thain, could take over the whole Shire without anyone lifting a finger to stop him?

"It was so sudden," I said slowly. "I mean, he bought the Mill and the Ivy Bush, and folks didn't like it, but he had the money, he had a right to buy, if the owners were minded to sell. It wasn’t till he was putting them out of Bagshot Row that he was breaking the law, and then they called for Mayor Will, and nobody thought Lotho would dare stand against the Mayor. When they took Will and put him in the Lockholes, it was like everyone was just shocked, they couldn't believe it had happened! Lotho had a gang of ruffians by then, and no one knew what to do, and we were all afraid."

"Fatty Bolger tried to get hobbits together, to throw the ruffians out, but he never could get enough," Marigold said. " And you know, Fatty was brave and all, but he had an awful lot of near misses, before he finally got smoked out of the Brockenbores. He'd go against a few ruffians on the road, and it'd turn out there was a whole lot of them in a barn or a house or something right near-by, and then the rebels'd have to run for it. There was some that would've followed him, but they said he was too reckless." I nodded – I had heard that about Fatty, too. Brave, but not smart.

"And the Thain, he kept them out of the Tookland, but that's all. It was like he didn't know, or didn't want to know, what was going on in the rest of the Shire."

"What about the Master, out in Buckland?" Frodo's voice was very low, and I remembered suddenly that he was from Buckland himself, long ago. The Master was his uncle, now I thought about it.

"I don't know, Mr. Frodo. I never heard what the Master was doing. He never come to help us, anyways."

"So everyone depended on the Mayor – and when the Mayor was put out of the way, the other rightful leaders of the Shire, the Thain and the Master, sat on their own lands and did nothing. The only one who stepped forward to lead was Fatty – and he had the courage but not the ability."

"No one knew what to do, Mr. Frodo," I said again.

"I understand, Rose. Nothing like this ever happened in the Shire before – and the Shire knows next to nothing of what goes on in the outside world, where such things do happen. Lotho probably wouldn't have even tried it, if he hadn't been trading with Saruman and come under the influence of his servants. But 'not knowing what to do' was very nearly the death of the Shire!"

He gave a deep sigh and got up, setting his empty pie pan in the sink. "Well, I'm off to bed. Good night to you, Rose, Marigold."

"Mr. Frodo?" I had one more question, and suddenly I had to know right now, not put it off till the next time we got to talking.

"Yes, Rose?"

"Sharkey – Saruman – he was like Gandalf, wasn't he? I mean, in the beginning? He was supposed to help hobbits, and Elves……"

"That's right. He was the head of Gandalf's Order, actually, the one Gandalf went to for counsel. But he had been corrupted, he had made alliance with the Enemy."

"But why, Mr. Frodo? What corrupted him? Why did he want to destroy the Shire?"

Frodo's face changed, his eyes turned inward. "Why, indeed?" he murmured. "Gandalf said he'd been studying the lore of the Ring, until at last the desire for it overcame him. He betrayed his Order and himself, in his madness to possess it. You could even say that's what killed him in the end – and yet he never so much as touched the thing! Just thinking about it was enough to corrupt and destroy him. Just – thinking about it –"

He turned and walked down the passage as if he'd forgotten we were there, and I shivered, wishing I had waited and asked Sam or Mr. Merry. Anyone but Mr. Frodo.

Chapter 11: Reading

in which Rosie and Sam snap at Frodo, but still give him what he wants

When the weather got warm, Sam carried a table out in the garden and we ate dinner there. It seemed odd to me at first, eating outside, but Sam said Mr. Frodo spent too much time indoors and it'd be good for him, being out in the open air. And once I got over the strangeness of it, I liked having the flowers blooming all around and the view out over the Party Field while we ate. Sam's mallorn tree was shooting up so fast, seemed like you could almost watch it grow, and the air felt cool and fresh after I'd been leaning over the kitchen fire.

Mr. Frodo generally joined us in the kitchen after dinner. One evening he was sitting by the window reading to us while I washed up and Sam whittled me some clothes pegs. Suddenly he laid the book down and asked abruptly, "Sam, do you still read?"

Sam looked surprised. "Well, not too much lately, Mr. Frodo. I've been that busy since we got back, I hadn't really thought about it."

"You haven't forgotten, have you? Come read a page or two and let me hear you."

Sam got up obediently and took the book. I remember it was a translation Mr. Bilbo had made, from some old history of the Second Age. Sam stumbled a bit on the strange names, but I thought he did pretty well.

Mr. Frodo didn't. "You're rusty, Sam. I think you should be reading to us in the evenings, till you get back in practice."

Sam looked embarrassed. "All right, Mr. Frodo. Mr. Bilbo would've been right irked, did he hear the hash I made of those names."

I was pretty irked myself, hearing my husband shamed for his reading. "Well, Mr. Frodo, if Sam is going to read to us, will you be whittling my clothes pegs?"

Sam gave me a horrified look, being so pert with the master, but I was too provoked to care. Mr. Frodo didn't take me up, though.

"I'll see you get your pegs, Rose," he said quietly. "And I think you ought to learn to read as well."

"Me? Read? For pity's sake, why?"

I couldn't have been more surprised, if he told me I ought to learn to handle a sword! Many a hobbit lad never learned to read, and for a lass to know her letters was almost unheard of. The Tooks, now, maybe they taught their daughters to read, but certain sure the Cottons didn't.

"It won't be much use for me to write the story of the War, if nobody reads it. I hope you'll read it to your children, when you have them, and they'll read it to their children, and so on. Otherwise it will all be forgotten, and I'm afraid the Shire will go back to sleep again. We might not be so lucky next time."

It seemed like that was always his great fear, that the danger would come again and the Shire would be swept away. I didn't see how being able to read would be of any help, and I said so.

"If hobbits know the dangers they lived through in the past, it may steady them, help them believe they can survive, if trouble comes again. And if they remember the lies and stratagems that evil powers have used in the past, there's hope that they’ll recognize evil when it comes again, and have the will to resist. It all comes down to remembering, Rose. Things that aren't written down are too easily forgot."

It reminded me of the night he'd been talking the same way to me and Marigold, and how I'd been grieved, thinking what it had cost him to defeat the Dark Lord. I guess it was that, more than really being convinced by what he said, that made me agree.

"All right, Mr. Frodo. I'll learn, if you want me to."

"Thank you, Rose. Will you teach her, Sam, or would you rather I did?"

"I guess I remember my letters well enough to teach my own wife to read! Thank you all the same, Mr. Frodo, but I'll teach her, seeing you're so set on it."

I decided Sam hadn't taken the slur on his reading as tamely as I'd thought. He wasn't one to brag, but I knew he'd always taken a lot of satisfaction in being lettered, and knowing all the old tales Mr. Bilbo had taught him. Why, back before they went away he even wrote a few poems of his own, and he used to read them to me sometimes.

When we were alone in our room that night, I asked him about those poems. "Do you still have them, Sam? I'd rather read them than those history books of Mr. Frodo's, since I'm going to learn."

"I expect they went missing when them ruffians dug up Bagshot Row, Rosie. Never mind – you learn to read, and I'll write some new poems just for you. I think maybe Mr. Frodo has the right of this after all. I can see some good in it already, you reading."

"If you have to be away, you can write to me, Sam."

"And you can answer," he said, and pulled me into his arms. "I hope I won't have to be away so much, though, after this. I think the clearing up is about under control now, and I can stay home and get on with the garden. And other things."

Chapter 12: Keeping Secrets

in which Sam and Rosie have a lovers' quarrel

Mr. Frodo got the clothes pegs for me that same week, and he didn't whittle them, either -- he paid my brother Nibs to make them! Sam chortled when I told him.

"There now, I wondered how he'd do it, when he said he'd get 'em for you. I didn't figure he'd take up whittling, not Mr. Frodo!"

I was pegging out the laundry one bright morning while Sam staked the tomato plants. I had kept the garden weeded and watered when he was busy round the Shire, but the tomatoes were his special pride, and I daren't touch them.

It was good having him home – things were getting back to normal at last, though he was still planting trees everywhere he went. I teased him about it sometimes.

"You'll have us living in Greenwood the Great again, like Mr. Frodo says the first hobbits did. It'll be Shire-wood the Great before you get done!"

"Nothing wrong with that, neither," he said, and he picked me up and swung me around till we were both giddy with laughter. "Just so I leave a few open spaces for gardens and such."

"Right, well, leave room to grow some pipe-weed, Sam Gamgee! We don't want to run short again!"

I spun round to find Merry Brandybuck had come in the gate behind us. We hadn't never heard him, we'd been making so much noise with our foolishness.

"Where's Frodo, Sam? I've come to carry him off to Crickhollow, by main force if I have to. He's buried himself up here at Bag End long enough. He promised us a visit months ago, and it's time he paid up."

"I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Merry! It'll do him good to have a change, get out with hobbits a bit. Doesn't do nothing but work on that book of his, and he needs a breath of fresh air."

Sam had tried to coax Mr. Frodo to go round the Shire with him, but Frodo wouldn't budge from Bag End. I wondered if Mr. Merry would have any better luck, but I underestimated him.

I guess he had a fight on his hands, but he won it in short order. I carried afternoon tea into the study for them, and I had all I could do to keep a straight face. Mr. Merry was all smoothness and charm, taking the tray from me with a smile, but Mr. Frodo sat stiff in his chair with his face like a storm cloud, looking like he'd just lost an argument.

Which he had, for they rode off together the next morning.

"We'll see you at Michel Delving for Mid-Year's Day, Sam!" Merry called over his shoulder. Mr. Frodo lifted a hand in farewell but didn't speak.

"And that's only a week away, Rosie! Are we ready?" Sam turned to me looking a bit distracted, as if it had just occurred to him that Overlithe was almost upon us.

"Oh, I think so, Sam. I've got a fine piece of lace to show, that I made last winter – and if Angelica Baggins has one as good, I'll eat it!" I was proud of my lace, and Sam grinned at my vehemence. "And I've got strawberry preserves to show, and some to sell, too, and Marigold's coming this week to help me finish that quilt for the quilt show. Are you bringing garden stuff? You haven't had much time to get ready, working all over the Shire like you've been."

"Too true, lass." He sighed. "But I can bring sparrow-grass – that comes up all on its own without much help from me, thank goodness, and we can bring peapods to sell – not many folk grow them, the sweet ones, so there should be a market for 'em. I don't think I've got nothing to show, though. Been too busy to think about it. Maybe at the Autumn Fair – I might try some milk-fed pumpkins."

"Yes, do, Sam! I've heard tell of those and never seen one – I bet there's lots of hobbits have never seen them."

"Good enough. I'll even show you how to do it, Rosie, but you've got to keep it secret, mind."

"I kept your secret all last year – guess I can keep another one."

He gave me an odd look. "What secret did you keep?"

"About the Dark Lord's Ring."

"You knew about that? Who told you?" His light, teasing tone was gone, suddenly, and it felt like a shadow came across the sun. I didn't answer him.

"Wait. There's only one person could've told you, only one who knew -- Fatty Bolger. Now how did Fatty come to be telling you? What did you have to do with Fredegar Bolger while I was away?"

"What did I have to do with him, Sam Gamgee? I cooked for him, is what I had to do! I made him a cheesecake and Marigold made him a mushroom pie, and we went to his house and got him well-fed and tipsy and talkative, so's he'd tell us where you went, you and Mr. Frodo! Because you didn't trust me enough to tell me yourself, you just went off into the Wild and nearly got yourself killed, and took your own sweet time coming back, too! You can call yourself lucky I even waited for you!"

I was crying by now. I flung the bag of clothes pegs at his head and ran inside.

The kitchen was cool and dim after the garden. I pumped some water and washed my face and arms, and made a pot of tea. I didn't feel all that good – queasy, kind of. Sam and I had rarely had an argument, and this one had blown up out of nowhere.

Or maybe not. Maybe it had been simmering for a long time and I hadn’t let myself think about it, how he hadn't told me he was leaving the Shire. I didn't mind that he went with Mr. Frodo. That was just Sam – he wouldn't leave Frodo to face danger alone. He'd be every bit as loyal to me, I knew that.

But I minded that he hadn't told me, hadn't trusted me with the truth. That I'd had to go and worm it out of Fatty, because Sam hadn't told me -- I minded that. And I had never told him so.

Well, I'd told him now! And he could think what he liked about me going to Fatty's house – it was his own fault, for not trusting me. I felt really sick, all of a sudden, and I slipped out the back door and threw up behind a rosebush. Sam was nowhere to be seen. I went back inside and lay down on our bed, right in the middle of the morning; pulled the quilt up over my head and went to sleep.

When I woke up, Sam was there, lying next to me on top of the quilt, watching me.

"I'm sorry, Rosie," he said. "I'm sorry. You're right, I should've told you. I was wrong to just go off like that, and you not knowing what was going on. I guess I am lucky you waited."

I worked one arm out from under the quilt and hugged him. "Oh Sam, it was so awful!

I just wish you would've come back right away, once the Ring was destroyed. Why did you wait so long before you came home?"

He shook his head. "Strider wanted us to wait, till he was crowned and wedded. We had to stop in Rohan for the King's funeral, and in Rivendell to see Mr. Bilbo – I don't know, lass. I guess we never thought what might be going on back home, or that you'd be grieving. And I don't know why not, for I'd seen plain enough in Galadriel's Mirror that things might not be right, in the Shire! All we thought of was the Ring, and once it was gone, I guess we didn't think at all, none of us." He stroked my hair. "Forgive me?"

I got both arms round him and hid my face against his chest. "Of course! I'm so glad you're home now, Sam. It was such a horrible year. And I wasn't ' "having anything to do" with Fatty Bolger – how could you even ask me that!"

"I'm sorry, lass. But you're so pretty and – you could've done better than the Bag End gardener, you know. Your Da's one of the chief hobbits in these parts. I reckon you married beneath yourself, Rosie."

"Samwise Gamgee! There's not a better hobbit in the Shire, and not another one I'd want to be married to! Just don't let me hear any more nonsense of that sort, or I really won't forgive you!"

He laughed and held me tight, and I began to feel queasy again.

"Rosie? Are you all right? What are you doing in bed, anyway?"

"I'm all right, just don't feel good." I sat up and pushed back the quilt. "What time is it, Sam? It must be near lunchtime."

"More like afternoon tea. Do you feel well enough to come sit in the kitchen? I'll make you some toast."

He kept his arm round me while we went down the passage and settled me tenderly in a rocking chair. In the middle of the kitchen was the biggest bouquet of flowers I'd ever seen, overflowing from a five-gallon pickling crock.

"Sam! Did you clean out the whole flower garden?"

"Close," he said. "I was that upset, I went for a walk along the road, and who should I meet but Fatty Bolger, out exercising his pony and trying to get some color back after being laid up ever since he got out of the Lockholes."

"Oh Sam, you didn't go and ask him about me!" I'll never be able to face Fatty again, I thought.

"Aye, I asked him – asked him if he was trying to cut me out with my lass while I was away. And he give a laugh I reckon you could've heard in Waymeet and said he would, sure enough, if he thought he could get away with it, but you -- you'd never look at another hobbit if he come riding on a camel and dressed in cloth of gold. Then he told me about you and Mari coming to his house and bamboozling the secret out of him. I told him he ought to be ashamed, letting a couple of lasses get round him like that, and he said he'd back the pair of you against any hobbit in the Shire, me included, and I better just be glad you were on my side! Which I am! Glad, I mean."

He came and knelt on the floor by my chair and took my hands. "And then I felt like the biggest fool ever born for doubting you, and I went and picked every flower in the garden, pretty near, for a bouquet to say I'm sorry. Good thing Mr. Frodo won't be back till next week; some of the little buds should be opened up by then!"

"Good thing," I agreed, laughing. "And now what about that toast you promised me? While you're feeling so foolish and all, and willing to wait on me…."

He didn't rise to my teasing.

"I'll wait on you all my days, Rosie-girl, and count myself lucky."

Married beneath myself? It'll take me all my life to be worthy of him.

Chapter 13: Overlithe and Under the Weather

in which Frodo hears something he doesn't like

It was the best Overlithe Fair in years. There must have been near a thousand hobbits camping in the meadow east of Michel Delving, a rainbow of tents spread out as far as you could see, with a sprinkling of box wagons that folk brought, who didn't like sleeping on the ground.

Sam and I stayed with my family, for we didn't have a tent of our own yet. Mari had ridden with them, leaving the Gaffer almost alone back in Hobbiton, to keep an eye on the Bag End garden. Sam didn't want to go without him, but the Gaffer overrode his objections.

"Go on, go on – I'm not quite on my last legs yet, and I don't need no baby-minder! I been going to Overlithe Fair these eighty years and more – I don't guess they'll be showing nothing I ain't seen before, and I don't fancy sleeping out-of-doors at my time of life! I'll keep the garden weeded so it's not all overgrowed when you get back."

His tone was rough, but his eyes were soft as he looked at his youngest son, returned from the dead as you might say, and he patted Sam's arm before he turned and reached in his pocket for his pipe. Sam stared at him in wonder, holding his arm where the Gaffer had touched him. He wasn't used to caresses from his crusty old father.

"Well, if you're sure, Da – and thank'ee! We'll bring you home some good pipeweed, then. Anything else you're wanting?"

"Bring me back a little grandchild, while you're at it," the Gaffer said, with a mischievous glance at me. "Time you two was starting a family, ain't it?"

I thought that was a good time for me to head up the Hill for home, but I heard Sam behind me answering with a chuckle, "Well, we're doing the best we can, Gaffer. It's only two months since the wedding, you know!"

So we went to the Fair without the Gaffer, and I wasn't entirely sorry about that. Not but what I wanted a family too, as soon as might be. Only I'd prefer not to hear about it, from him nor anybody else, till I was ready to announce something.

Sam and I had the pony trap to ourselves, and that was a rare treat. We didn't have a lot of time just alone together. We talked a good bit of nonsense on the way, being silly, like. He sang me a song he made up, about an old Troll, and he made it that comical, I near fell out of the trap, laughing.

"I remember now, I sang that same song to Mr. Frodo and them, on our journey," he said when he finished. "It was after he got wounded by the Black Rider, and we were trying so hard to get to Rivendell. I was scared, I tell you, Rosie! I was afraid he wouldn't never live to get to the Elves who could maybe cure him. But they wanted a song, so I gave 'em that one, to make him laugh, I hoped. And he did laugh." He sighed. "He don't laugh much now, though. I worry about him sometimes."

"He'll be all right, Sam. You said yourself he had a real hard time. You don't bounce back from something like that just overnight." I linked my arm through his and leaned my head on his shoulder. "We'll give him family life, like he wants, and good food and happy times. He'll come around."

I really believed it, then, that that would be enough. Love and laughter, plenty of wholesome food – that would fix Mr. Frodo right up. It wasn’t like he was really sick or anything.

There was no shortage of food or laughter at the Fair – nor love neither. Mum and Da had two tents set up, one for my brothers and a bigger one for the rest of us. Marigold had ridden in the back of their cart, and she was eager to whisper to me everything that she had said, and he had answered, he being my brother Tom, all the way from Bywater. By the time Sam and I got there, everything was fixed nice at the campsite, so we set off to see the sights.

Tom and Mari started out with us, but we lost them at the broadjump. Tom couldn’t resist trying his long legs on that, and Mari stayed to cheer him on.

“You be sure you bring her back in time for supper!” I told Tom, pretending sternness, not that there was any danger that he wouldn't. If Tom ever missed a meal, we’d call the healer in without another thought.

The exhibits were laid out at the Village Hall, so we stopped there first. I turned my lace in at the fancywork table and stopped to look at the other pieces on display. Angelica Baggins had one entered, sure enough, but it was a simpler pattern than mine, and there wasn't any other pillow lace, just tatting. Blue ribbon for me, I thought. That ought to please Sam.

Mum had brought the quilt Mari and I made, and it was hung up with the others. There were a lot of quilts – I guess plenty of folks were keeping busy quilting last winter. With the ruffians all over the Shire and no one feeling safe to step outside, might as well stay indoors and sew patchwork! Ours was a Wedding Ring pattern – shows where my head was at – and it was good, but there were some better. Third place, if we were lucky.

Sam pulled me over by the woodcarvers' shelves, and there was some beautiful work there. He went from piece to piece slowly, lifting down some of them and examining them from every angle.

"Wish I could carve like this," he murmured. He was holding a wooden bird's nest so finely detailed you would have thought it was really made of dried grasses, and a bird perched on the edge of it that seemed almost ready to fly away. Sam was a pretty fair whittler, when he had the time, and not just clothes pegs, neither! He'd made some wooden toys for Nibs, when my brother was small, a pony pulling a trap and some farm animals. But this wooden bird and her nest were the work of a master carver, far beyond Sam's skill.

"You've got green fingers, love," I told him. "You can poke a bare stick in the ground and make it grow. Sam Gardener, we ought to call you, instead of Gamgee."

He grinned and set the bird nest back in its place, put his arm round my shoulders. "And you've got a silver tongue, Rosie-lass. Come along now and pick out your chickens."

"Chickens? What chickens?"

"The chickens Mr. Frodo says you can keep in that little shed out back. I asked him before he went off with Mr. Merry. All you have to do is pick out what kind you want."

"Really? Oh, Sam, that's wonderful! I've missed having something alive to take care of, living at Bag End!"

He guffawed. "And what are we then, stone statues? A nice way to talk about your husband and your employer, Mistress Rose!"

The animals were housed in a large, open-sided shed. Da had a pig on exhibit, and Nibs was carrying water to it when we went by.

“Hey, Rosie, Sam! Mr. Frodo was looking for you – I told him you’d be down by the tents!”

“Do you know what he wanted?” Sam asked.

“No – he looked put out, though. He was all by himself, too.”

Sam rubbed his chin. “I should probably go find him and see what’s wrong. Do you mind, lass, if I let you go pick out your biddies on your own? I’ll come back as quick as I can, but you’re the one knows about chickens.”

“For sure, go on, Sam. That’s better anyhow, I can take my time and not feel like I’m holding you back from something else. I like chickens.”

He laughed. "I know you do, I’ve seen you with them up at the farm. The wonder to me is how we ever get one for dinner, you’re so fond of 'em! Well, go enjoy yourself, then, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. How many do you figure you can fit in that old shed?"

“Oh – a dozen, maybe, and one rooster. Ought to be room for that many.”

He went off to find Frodo, and I continued through the livestock barn. Pigs, sheep, goats, ponies, cows – it was a hot day, and the odors were strong. I stopped to admire some green-headed ducks – I liked ducks too, but we didn’t have a pond for them at Bag End.

The chickens were in an enclosure by themselves, with high sides to prevent them fluttering over the top. I guess there was at least a few of every kind of chicken we have in the Shire – red and black and speckled, skinny white ones for eggs and enormous, fluffy golden ones for meat. There were even some feather-leg hens, and I thought what fun it would be to have some of those!

But no, better to pick a good breed and stick with it. Get a healthy young rooster with a peaceful disposition, and I could build a decent flock of birds, have some to sell at next year’s Fair, plus all the eggs we could eat and a stewing hen now and again.

I leaned against the enclosure, watching the birds and considering which breed would do best for our needs. Hobbits pushed past me where I stood, bumping me sometimes without noticing. It was so hot. The animal smells were awful strong.

It was so hot. Stifling. I felt sick. Better sit down. Isn’t there a bench around here somewhere? Sick….

I was falling, couldn’t stop myself.

When I came to, I was lying on the ground looking up at a circle of faces.

“Back off, folks, back off – let her get some air!” An old gaffer was standing above me, shooing people away. “Now then, missy, having a fit of the vapors, are ye? Think ye can stand, if I give ye a hand?”

“Yes, please,” I said, mightily ashamed of myself. The vapors! Me? I was a strong, healthy farm girl – and I could outrun my brothers any day of the week! I couldn’t think what had come over me, fainting like that.

He helped me outside where it wasn’t so hot and there was a little breeze to carry the smells away. There were some benches there, and I sat down, still feeling wobbly.

“Where’re your folks at, missy? Tell me where they are, and I’ll tell 'em where to find ye – better ye sit and rest a bit, now.”

“That’s all right – my husband will be here soon. Thank you for helping me. I’ll be all right till he gets here.”

“Now then, missy, I don’t like leaving ye all alone here. If your good man gets held up in the beer tent or somewheres, ye might be here a good while. Ye’d best let me call someone.”

I suppose I would’ve had to, if only to get rid of him, but just then a tall hobbit sauntered up behind him.

“Rose? Are you all right? What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Merry!” I turned to my kindly rescuer. “I’ll be all right now. Thank you so much for helping me!”

He gave me an odd look – Merry cut a dashing figure, a head taller than any hobbit in the crowd, his mail shirt glinting in the sunlight and a sword at his side – no one would have mistaken him for my husband, that’s certain! But he was the perfect gentlehobbit, equal to any occasion.

“Did you come to her rescue? Thank you for your kindness, indeed! It’s good to know that the Troubles are behind us and hobbits helping each other once again.”

“Well, if the young lady’s a connection of yours, young sir, you oughtn’t allow her to wander around unattended. She fainted dead away in there – might’ve been trampled underfoot. You’d best get her someplace she can lie down and be quiet!”

“I’ll do exactly that,” Merry said agreeably. He held out his arm to support me, and we started back toward the tents.

“Mr. Merry, don’t tell Sam, please! He’d just get himself in a tizzy, worrying about me.”

He looked down at me, his face serious. “Now, Rose, you can’t expect me to keep something like this from Sam – he’d never forgive me! Or are you in the habit of fainting dead away? I wouldn’t have said you were the type.”

"Of course I’m not the type! It was just so hot in there – seemed like there wasn’t any air–"

“Will you promise to tell your mother, then? Someone must be told, Rose, so they’ll be looking out for you.”

“I’ll tell Mum -- just not Sam.”

“All right. But where is Sam?”

“Went off to find Mr. Frodo. Do you know what he wanted?”

“No – I’ve been looking at the ponies, we need some fresh stock in Buckland. Frodo was in the beer tent last time I saw him, confabbing with Will Whitfoot about something or other. Mayor’s business, no doubt.”

We were back at the tents by then, and Mr. Merry left me with a firm, “You tell your mother now, Rose!” and took himself off. I went and got a drink of cold tea and lay down in the tent, and that’s where Sam found me when he got back an hour later. I woke up and he was sitting there whittling a stick.

“Awake now, Rosie-girl? I’m sorry I was so long. Did you pick out your chickens?”

“Yes – I thought we’d get some Reds, they’re good for eggs and meat both. Did you find Mr. Frodo?”

“No, he found me. For a while I wished he hadn’t, neither! Oh, he was in a state, Rosie, and no mistake! Seems he was sitting in the beer tent and some idiot come asking him questions, something like where’d he learn the magic to turn Sharkey to a pile of dust, and was he going to set up as a wizard on his own account.”

“What?”

“Oh, you know the fool ideas people get. The story’s got around, seemingly, how Sharkey died at Bag End, but someone always has to add a little something to it, till it’s more tale than truth. He wasn’t no pile of dust, as them that buried him know well enough.”

“So, Mr. Frodo's upset because folks think he killed Sharkey?”

“That’s part of it, but more because the whole story is fantastical, it’s like a made-up tale for children. You know what a store he sets by history -- hobbits knowing what really happened with the War and the Ring and all. It makes him wild when this kind of foolishness gets spread around instead of the truth.”

“Well, folks will talk, Sam." And more's the pity, I thought. It really was too bad, when Frodo'd shown mercy to Sharkey, that he'd get the blame for killing him! Not that anyone blamed him, exactly, but still –

"He’s writing the true story in that book of his, and I guess that’ll have to be enough for him.”

I felt better after my nap, and it was getting cooler as the sun went down. I helped Mum and Mari get some supper into everyone, and then we followed the crowd to a big open area in the middle of the field where a bonfire was laid but not yet lighted.

I saw Mr. Frodo off to one side, talking to Will Whitfoot. Mr. Pippin and Mr. Merry were standing with them, but they came over as soon as they saw us.

“Sam, did he talk to you about this?” Mr. Pippin asked.

Sam nodded, looking unhappy, and I caught his arm. “What, Sam? What is it?”

“He’s resigning as Mayor,” Merry said. “Old Will doesn’t want him to, wants him to see out the term, till the next election, but he won’t do it.”

“But why?” Pippin demanded. “It’s not like it takes up a lot of his time – and it’s about the only thing that gets him out with hobbits every now and then. Take away being the Mayor and he’ll never leave Bag End at all.”

“Guess that’s the way he wants it,” Sam said. The others turned on him, and he held up his hands. “I don’t like it no more than you do, so don’t jump down my throat! He’s turning into a regular hermit, and it’s not good for him. But tell me how I can make him get out with folks, when he don’t want to go!”

They sighed and shook their heads, and walked slowly back over to Frodo. Sam and I spread blankets on the grass and sat down to wait for the evening’s festivities. Soon the rest of the family joined us, and Mari came to sit by me and whisper about Tom and what-all they'd done that day, roaming round the Fair together. Sam and Da sat talking in low voices.

It began getting dark, and the first stars came out. Hobbits started opening picnic baskets, and jars of lemonade and strawberry switchel appeared, plates of biscuits and seedcake, nut rolls and spicy meat pockets wrapped in pastry. There was a barrel of beer set up on the outer edge of the crowd. Suddenly the bonfire flared up and there was a shout from those around it.

“Good Overlithe to you, Lily! Good Overlithe, children!” exclaimed my father, and everyone began hugging each other and calling, "Good Overlithe!" Happiness bubbled up in me -- Overlithe was the best night of the year, and Sam was home, we were wed, the ruffians were gone. Good Overlithe, indeed!

Sam caught me in a hug that drove the breath right out of me, and I gave as good as I got. “Good Overlithe, Rosie, and a hundred more to come!” he said, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth right there in front of everyone. The night was loud with good wishes and laughter and the bonfire blazed up in the middle of the field till it was taller than any hobbit, even Magnificent Merry Brandybuck.

After a bit the noise died down, and everyone settled comfortably on their blankets to eat their picnics and listen to the speakers. Captains Merry and Pippin told about the Battle of Bywater, making a grand story of it, for there were plenty of hobbits present tonight who hadn’t been there, being they lived in other parts of the Shire. The Thain stood up and told how his people had hounded the last of the ruffians out of the Shire, meeting up with the Master of Buckland and chasing them right out into the Wilds, what was left of them.

Then Mr. Frodo made Sam come up front and tell how he’d been replanting the trees that were felled, and about the mallorn from Lothlorien that he’d planted in Hobbiton, which everyone was welcome to come and see, it being the only one west of the mountains and a great wonder. Fatty Bolger spoke next and thanked all the hobbits who had been part of his rebel band, and joked how he might be thin this Overlithe, but just wait until next year! The crowd laughed at that and cheered and clapped for him.

Then Sam pulled Mr. Frodo forward and said that Captains Merry and Pippin might be the heroes of Bywater, and Fredegar Bolger the greatest rebel leader the Shire had ever seen, but Frodo Baggins was the hero of the Great War that Bywater was only one small battle in, and the Shire just a little part of the whole thing.

They cheered him too, but not as loud as they had for Fatty. The Great War was a long way off, and nobody had seen Mr. Frodo do anything specially heroic. He’d come home from foreign parts and done something to that mysterious Sharkey the ruffians were always bragging about. No one knew just what it was Frodo had done, exactly, but it sounded uncanny and not something they wanted to think about. So Sam’s attempt to honor him fell rather flat.

Then Will Whitfoot stepped into the firelight, and everyone went wild applauding for him. He called for silence, and then he thanked Mr. Frodo for being Acting Mayor while he was ill. He said he’d asked him to finish out the term, but Frodo had declined and wanted to resign, so Will would be Mayor again now. Then he told everyone to give three cheers for Mayor Frodo, and they did, and added three more for Will himself. And that was the end of the speeches.

The band struck up a country dance, and couples started pushing into the open area around the fire. Frodo and Merry and Pippin came back with Sam and sat down with us, and Sam made sure they got something to eat. Then he held out his hand for me to come dance, but I shook my head.

"I'm pretty tired, Sam – do you mind if we just sit for awhile?"

Mr. Merry gave me a sharp look, but Sam pulled me close and stroked my hair.

"'Course not, Rosie – use me for a pillow, if you want to, and have a nap."

That sounded nice, and I stretched out on the blanket with my head on his thigh, but I didn't go to sleep. There was a little silence, just the band playing and hobbits talking quietly on other blankets nearby, then Mr. Pippin said urgently, "Why, Frodo?"

"Because I don't want to be Mayor. I don't have the knowledge to be a good one, and I haven't got time to learn."

"What do you mean, you haven't got time? You're sitting at Bag End with nothing to do – Sam and Rose wait on you hand and foot, or my name isn't Peregrin Took! There can't be that much to being the Mayor – I'd say Old Will goes to banquets more than he does anything else!"

"Well, I've been to enough banquets to last me for three or four years, at least! You're forgetting, Pippin, I have a book to write."

"And you've been writing that book ever since Minas Tirith! Either it should be finished soon, or you're going to drag it out for the rest of your natural life, like Bilbo did. Which is all right for a hobby, if that's what you like, but you can't let it take over your whole life, Frodo! Bilbo didn't become a hermit, because he was writing a book."

"How far have you got in the book, Frodo?" Merry asked quietly.

"I was in Moria when you came and kidnapped me. A good place to get interrupted, I must admit."

"A nice little jaunt across the Shire and Overlithe Fair – I wouldn't have minded an interruption like that at the time!" said Pippin. "Have you got to the Balrog yet?"

"Yes."

Frodo was fiddling with that white jewel he wears round his neck, and I felt Sam shifting under my head. He started rubbing my back, absentminded like, as if he was just giving his hand something to do.

"It must be hard – to go back, even in memory, to write about that." Merry's voice was low.

"It is."

"So wouldn't it be better to be doing something else as well? I don't mean being the Mayor – you already resigned, in any event – a bit awkward to stand up now and say you've changed your mind! But something to break up the writing, Frodo. You haven't reached the worst parts yet, by a long shot."

Mr. Frodo lay back on the blanket. "Maybe so, Merry. You and Pippin will have to help me, you know, on your part of the story. There was a lot more to it than just my part, and Sam's."

"Oh aye, we'll help you, Frodo. You come on back to Crickhollow after the Fair, and you can pick our brains all you like."

"Would that be before or after the dinner party, Pippin?" Frodo's voice was warm with affection, and he reached out a hand to pull Pippin down on the blanket beside him. "While you're rushing about chopping up ice to chill the wine, or after everyone leaves and you're so muzzy, all you can do is fall asleep before the fire?"

Mr. Pippin chuckled. "Afterward, definitely. I'll make a much better story of it afterward -- if I can stay awake."

"Yes, but you see, I don't want you to 'make a story of it'. I want the plain unvarnished truth, because that's what's going in the book."

"Is that what Bilbo wrote – the plain unvarnished truth?"

Mr. Frodo laughed. "Oh – for the most part! A little varnish here and there. But there's a difference, Pip. Bilbo was writing for himself, but I'm writing for the future -- because there has to be a record of this and it has to be a true one."

"You sound very serious about this," said Mr. Merry.

"Very serious, and all the more so after today. It's turning to legend already, Merry, even the parts that happened right here in the Shire! There were at least a hundred hobbits standing there watching when Wormtongue murdered Saruman – how under heaven can the story be going round that I killed him with some wizard's magic and turned him to dust?"

"You can't stop folk from talking, Mr. Frodo." Sam said gently. "We've got our share of fools in the Shire, same as anywhere, and when a fool starts talking, what he says is foolishness. And us hobbits have always had our stories."

"Yes, stories!" said Frodo. "Bilbo's tunnels full of dragon gold – and now my supposed magic powers! So history gets swallowed up in fairy tale, and nobody believes it anyway. But we can't afford it this time! What will happen if the Shadow rises again? What would have become of the Shire, if we hadn't come home when we did?"

"If we hadn't come home?" Pippin sounded startled. "You mean if the Quest had failed?"

"Not necessarily. Say for argument's sake that the Quest succeeded, but Gandalf didn't get to Sam and me in time to save us. Maybe you and Merry would have stayed on another year or two in Gondor, or gone back to the Mark for a while. Could the Shire have coped with Saruman, if the Travellers didn't return?"

"No," I said. I felt chilled, listening to him. "No, Fatty and the Thain were doing all they could, and I suppose the Master was, too, in Buckland. And we couldn't cope with Lotho, even. No one knew what to do." It was terrible to think of, to remember how helpless and afraid we had been.

There was a silence. Finally Mr. Merry said, "So what's your idea, Frodo? How do you propose to protect the Shire, if trouble comes again? I don't mean now, for we'd put it down in short order, if it began. I suppose you're worrying about the future, what comes to the Shire after our lifetimes."

"What did Gandalf say, when he told us he wasn't coming back with us? He said we'd been trained for this, trained to deal with what we'd find here. I think he guessed, even then, where Saruman was."

"We had weapons, and the training to use them," Mr. Pippin began.

"Right – but that wouldn't have been enough, Pip." I could almost see Mr. Merry thinking it out. "Four halflings – even with swords! – wouldn't have been enough against hundreds of big Men. As it was, even if they had taken our swords away, we would have thrown them out anyway, because we weren't afraid of them and we could out-think them. We'd been listening to Gandalf and Aragorn – Theoden, too, and Faramir – so we knew how to out-maneuver an enemy. Like playing chess."

I glanced up at Sam, and he was smiling in the dark. He played chess with Mr. Frodo most nights that he was home, and his game was improving.

"Oh aye," said Mr. Pippin, sitting up with a grin. "So we'll teach all the youngsters to play chess! And we'll have an annual tournament – let's see, we can call it the Frodo Baggins Honorary Chess Meet, to be held every year at the Mid-summer Fair, for training young hobbits in tactics and strategy! What shall we give for prizes?"

"Swords," said Sam. "So's they'll have something to fight with, if they have to."

"Copies of Frodo's book – so they'll know what they're fighting for," Merry said gravely.

"And what if they can't read?" Frodo asked.

Pippin and Merry just stared at him, but Sam nodded slowly.

Chapter 14: Sunshine and Roses

in which Rose calls on Frodo for advice

“What are you talking about? Of course they'll be able to read – every hobbit lad of good family learns to read, Frodo! Goes without saying."

"Does it, Pippin? And what about hobbit lads – and lasses! – who aren't from what you call good families? The Gamgees, the Cottons, the Goodbodies –"

"You can read, can't you Sam?" Pippin interrupted.

"Mr. Bilbo taught me -- I wouldn't've learned, otherwise. My Gaffer, now, he can't read."

"What about you, Rosie?"

"Sam's teaching me – Mr. Frodo said I should learn."

Merry frowned. "You really think it's that important, Frodo – this book of yours?"

"I really think it's that important, yes. If I do nothing else the rest of my life, Merry, I must finish the book. But what good is it, if only a few can read it?"

"Your idea is that you want the whole Shire reading? That's a tall order."

Mr. Pippin laughed suddenly. "Oh aye, but no taller than destroying the Ring, and helping the King to his throne, and saving the Shire from Saruman! If we did all that, we ought to be able to teach hobbits to read!"

"I'm going to start a school in Hobbiton," said Mr. Frodo. "That's what I'll do for a break from the writing, Merry. Will you start one in Buckland, for the youngsters who don't go to the Hall school?"

"I'd have to have my father's consent – " He met Frodo's eyes. "All right, Frodo – I think he'll see the sense in it. We'll want a copy of that book, mind, when you get it done."

"There'd be no use me talking to the Thain," Pippin said quietly. "As near as I can tell, he doesn't think I'm capable of rational thought. I'll send you some supplies, Frodo, from the Smials school."

"Pippin –" Mr. Frodo began, but Pippin laughed suddenly and threw himself on top of his cousin.

"Never mind, I'm having a fine time racketing around the Shire and chopping ice to chill the wine! If my father thought I was up to it, he'd put me to work and I wouldn't like that at all!"

He held Mr. Frodo's shoulders down with one arm and began tickling him without mercy. Frodo fought back and Merry piled on -- and the three intrepid Travellers, heroes of the Great War and the Battle of Bywater, were reduced to a tangle of squirming bodies intent on tickling each other into spasms.

Sam looked down at me. “Feel like dancing now, Rosie?"

The next morning was the judging of exhibits, and Sam was one of the judges for garden stuff. That would keep him busy all morning, and I went off to explore the stalls that rimmed the edges of the field, selling everything from taffy apples to hair ribbons to luxurious, soft fur robes from some strange country far to the North. I was looking for a fairing for Sam, but nothing I saw was quite right.

At last I realized that what I really wanted for him was the little carved bird he had admired at the woodcarvers' exhibit. And I couldn't get him that – even if the artisan would sell, a carving like that would cost far more than I could afford. I sighed and moved on to the next stall.

This one was all books, and until this summer I would've passed it by. Now, though –

I stopped to look. They were old, these books, some bound in fine leather and expensive looking, but some that looked like they might be within my slender means. Sam treasured his one book and I knew he'd love to have another one. But how to choose? I opened a few of them at random, but I couldn't read well enough to make much sense of them.

"Are you finding anything good, Rose?" It was Frodo's voice, and I grabbed my chance.

"Mr. Frodo, will you help me find something for Sam, please? Something not too expensive? I'm not sure what he'd like."

"Well, what does he have already? That should give you an idea of his taste."

"He only has just the one book, Mr. Frodo – the Elven tales Mr. Bilbo gave him years ago"

"Is that all?" Frodo sounded shocked and more than that, grieved. "No wonder he doesn't read!" he murmured.

He started shuffling through the books, opening some of them and reading a page or two, setting a few to one side. I got tired of watching him and tried to find something I could read, even a little. Finally he said,

"All right, Rosie, tell me what you think of these. This is another Elven tale, the story of Beren, which we heard sung in Rivendell. I think he'd like that, or here's a book of garden lore – not that he needs anything of that sort, but still he might enjoy reading what some other gardener has written! And this is a collection of comic verse – I think he's written some himself, so he might like it."

"Oh my, they all sound nice!" I thought for a moment. "Well, he can write his own poems, if he wants some, and you're right – he really doesn't need a garden book, though he'd probably like it! But I don't think that Beren story is in his book of tales; at least I've never heard it, and he's read most all of them to me, one time or another. And he does love the Elven tales, so I guess that would be best. How much is it?"

"Don't worry about that, Rose – I'll get it for you."

"No, Mr. Frodo! Thank you, but – this has to be my own gift, with my own money. You understand, don't you?"

He handed me the book and I looked at the price inside the cover. "Oh good, yes, I have enough for this. Thank you for finding it!"

He waited while I caught the attention of the stall-holder and bought the book, and then he bought one of his own, a fat volume with a golden dragon on the cover. I was going to thank him once more and move on, when I had a sudden thought.

"Mr. Frodo? I don't know if you are – but – if you're wondering what to give Sam for your birthday, I think I know something he'd like."

I looked into his face with some trepidation, wondering if I was being too bold, but he chuckled. "Do you, Rose? I was wondering, as a matter of fact! What is it? Some new contraption for the garden?"

"No, sir. I can show you, if you'll come with me now, while he's busy judging."

He gave me his arm, polite as he always was, and I led him to the woodcarvers' display.

The judges had been there already, and the little bird in its nest had a rosette of blue dangling from its tail. I pointed it out to him, and he took it in his hands, turning it around and examining it with delight. I thought suddenly how alike they were, him and Sam, under the skin as you might say.

"Oh yes," he said softly. "You're right, Rosie, this is perfect. Let's see, who made it?" He turned it over and found the maker's mark. "All right, I'll have to find this fellow and see if he'll sell his little bird. Thank you, Rose!" To my utter confusion, he tipped my chin up and brushed a kiss on my forehead. "Off you go now, don't let Sam catch you lingering here, or he'll suspect something."

I wandered over to the fancywork table. There was my lace – with a Second-place ribbon. Second! Oh, I thought sure I'd get First! I did so want a blue ribbon

for Sam, to make him proud of me. I looked around to see who'd taken First – not Angelica? I knew my piece was better than hers!

But no – here was a lace pillow I hadn't seen when I looked yesterday. Mercy me, no surprise that it won; I'd never seen anything so gorgeous! Who in the Shire made lace this fine? I turned it over, and my eyes filled with tears. There was the maker's mark – a crooked letter G – and inside the curve of the letter an embroidered golden flower. Marigold!

She'd been stuck in that awful shack the ruffians built, for months and months, but she hadn't been sitting there moping. Her busy fingers had pulled this beauty out of the silent hours, the loveliest lace I'd ever seen. I remembered now that Mari's mother had been one of the best lacemakers in the Shire before her death. Well, Sam would be pleased, right enough! Both his lasses had done him proud.

I went back to the tents, and Mari was there making sandwiches for lunch. "Will a dozen be enough, you think, Rosie?"

"What, for all our crew? You're joshing, aren't you?"

She shook her head. "The lads won't eat any, Rose – the meat pocket contest is this afternoon. Will Sam be in it?"

I started eating one of the sandwiches. "When has Sam ever not been in it, barring the year he was away? Do you think Tom has a chance?"

She dimpled in amusement and bit into her own sandwich. "Not if Sam's in! Isn't it time he dropped out and gave the other lads a chance? He's a married hobbit now."

"He's married, Marigold, he's not dead! Maybe we can talk him into dropping out next year, so's Tom can win."

They'd been neck and neck in the contest since they were in their tweens, and none of the other lads even came close. The summer before he went away, Sam had eaten seventy-nine of the savory little pastries. Tom had given up at seventy-five, and he'd been sick that night and still a little green the following day, but Sam was fine and downed a good breakfast while Tom sat sipping peppermint tea to soothe his stomach.

Peppermint tea actually sounded pretty good, I thought. I was queasy again, after just the one sandwich. I couldn't think what was the matter with me lately – the weather wasn't as hot as all that!

"Ready to go, lass?" Sam came up from behind and put his arms around me. "First race in half-an-hour, and Merry and Pippin both riding – I told Mr. Frodo I'd get you so's we can all sit together."

"Me too, Sam?" asked Marigold, and he let go of me and swung her up in his arms like she was twelve years old again, instead of a grown-up lass big enough to be wed.

"Of course you too, Marigold Gamgee, if you want to sit with us old sobersides! What's come of that good-for-nothing fellow that was squiring you around the grounds yesterday, eh?"

"I don't know – maybe he's gone to get me a fairing. He'll be at the race, so he can just find me there."

"My word, Rosie, my little sister's grown up to be a minx – she'll lead your poor brother a merry dance! Well, come along, lassies, Mr. Frodo can't hold four seats forever, not for the first race of the day."

Laughing, we linked arms and stepped out onto the concourse, threading through the crowd. Hundreds of hobbits were gathering to the racetrack, and when we got close I could smell it, ponies and leather and dust – the scent of roasting meat drifting in from the food booths – and ugh! a dirty diaper somewhere near at hand! I pulled at Sam's arm, to get us away from that, before it made me queasy again. When we finally got to the stands, we found Mr. Frodo saving our seats and deep in conversation with the Thain himself.

Mr. Paladin was an imposing figure, grey-haired and hook-nosed, with steely blue eyes. He looked, true enough, like a hobbit who'd take no nonsense from the likes of Lotho Pimple. But right now he looked thoroughly uncomfortable, with Mr. Frodo speaking earnestly to him in low tones.

We stood a little apart, not wanting to interrupt, but at last Mr. Paladin looked up and saw us.

"Well, well, Frodo" he said jovially, "I think your young friends are waiting to sit down. I'll give some thought to this school idea of yours. We may be able to get something going for the lads in the village -- after harvest, you understand. First things first -- get the harvest in, then we can think about school! I'd best find my wife now and get ready to hold her hand – she still gets jittery when Peregrin races, no matter if he does spend his days riding break-neck round the Shire without a thought in his head!"

He strode away, and the crowd parted before him. Sam sat down by Mr. Frodo.

"Sure you want to give up being the Mayor?" he said with a grin. "You're right good at politicking."

Frodo groaned. "Let's go home, Sam. I'd rather face a band of orcs – of all the half-blind, provincial – " He bowed his head into his hands.

"He said he'd think about the school," Sam pointed out.

"Yes, he'll think about it – for a quarter of an hour. And put it off till after harvest and never think of it again. He doesn't see the need, no more than he saw the need to come help the rest of the Shire under Lotho – so long as the Tookland was untouched, he was satisfied! I ask you, Sam, how long can the Shire survive such leadership?"

"It's survived a good while already, Mr. Frodo; it'll hold on a bit longer. Mr. Pippin, now, he wouldn't sit still in the Tookland and let the rest of the Shire go to ruin, if the Troubles came again."

"No, you're right, he wouldn't. Nor Merry neither, nor you."

"Me!" Sam sounded flabbergasted. "Well, of course I wouldn't, but what's it got to do with me? I'm a gardener, Mr. Frodo, not the Master of Buckland!"

"Oh, didn't you know, Sam? I've got my eye on you for Mayor, one of these days." Sam stared at him, open-mouthed and speechless, and Mr. Frodo chuckled. “You don’t know yourself what you’re capable of, Sam Gamgee. You’ve got courage and devotion and plain hobbit sense – you’d be the best Mayor we ever had.”

Tom found us and sat down next to Mari right before the race began. Then the starting horn sounded, and there was a roar from the crowd as the ponies thundered down the track.

It was easy to spot Merry and Pippin, as big as they were, and of course their ponies were among the largest as well. Pippin was wearing the King's colors, a black shirt with a silver tree emblazoned front and back. He was a length ahead of the pack at the start, and Merry behind him in a knot of three or four, with the rest of the race scattered out in the rear. But the next time they came around, Merry had near caught up, and there were only two others close to them. By the last lap the cousins were neck and neck, and the next one back was more than a length behind.

The crowd was on its feet screaming, Sam clutching Mr. Frodo’s shoulder and

yelling, “Pippin! Merry! Pippin!” Frodo was half doubled over, holding his middle from laughing so hard and shouting, but he didn’t call no name at all, just, “Go! Go! Go!”

I couldn’t catch my breath to shout, just stood on tiptoe following them with my eyes. The track was in bright sun and Merry’s pony shone like living fire, as Merry pulled ahead of Mr. Pippin -- slow, so slow it seemed, his pony’s nose with its streak of white poking out ahead, and then Merry was in front. Pippin hunched down and seemed to be urging his pony on, but the poor beast was already going as fast as he could, seemingly, and Merry flashed through the ribbon a split second in the lead.

“Merry! Merry!” Mr. Frodo settled on a name at last, jumping down from the stands and running along next to the track till he got to where Merry stood. The race was was over and hobbits were walking the ponies while the winners stood to receive their prizes.

“Come on, lass!” Sam grabbed my hand and dragged me over to them, and we waited while Merry and Pippin, and the lad who’d taken Third, Nat Bracegirdle from Greenholm, bent their heads to receive their ribbons. Will Whitfoot was officiating, and he handed Mr. Merry a small, heavy purse, making some joke how Merry shouldn’t drink it all up that same night, did he want to enjoy the last day of the Fair! Merry laughed and offered to stand him a pint in the beer tent as soon as the races were over for the day, and then he turned and came over by us.

Mr. Frodo was about as uplifted as I’d ever seen him. He hugged Merry and then Pippin, and finally Sam, who hadn’t even raced, and then he stood there, beaming, and I marveled how young and sort of shining he looked, when he forgot his worries and let himself be happy.

People and ponies were milling all around us, lining up for the next race. I jumped back as one bay half reared up and shook his head right in front of me, and Sam caught me round the waist.

"Mind your beast, there, laddie," he called, and the rider looked back at us for an instant, a young fellow probably racing for the first time today, tense and serious.

Mr. Pippin held out his arms to herd us all away. “Come on, hobbits, we’ll have to get out of the way, the next race is beginning in a minute. Merry and I have to rub down our mounts – they’ve earned a bit of attention, wouldn’t you say! Meet you in the beer tent, or are you going back to watch the next one?”

Sam turned to me. “Another race, lass, or something to drink? What will you have?”

“The drink, please, and some shade. It’s awful hot out here.”

He looked sharp at me. “Aye, you’re all flushed, Rosie. You need to wear a hat, in this sun. I’ll buy you one this afternoon, for a fairing. A big straw hat with roses all round the crown, for my own Rose.”

“All right, we’ll see you at the beer tent. And Frodo – here,” Mr. Merry held out his prize purse to Frodo, who looked at him questioningly without taking it. “This is for your new school. I know you can’t have much of Bilbo’s gold left by now, and repairing Bag End must have set you back some. A school doesn’t run on air and sunshine – this will get you started, anyhow. Take it!” he added, as Frodo still stood there motionless. “You’re right, you know – the Shire will have to know a bit more, to survive. It may take me awhile to talk my father into it, but this is something I can do right now.”

Mr. Frodo reached out at last and took the purse. “Thank you, Merry.” He caught Mr. Merry in a long hug, and when he stepped back there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you – for everything.”

“Off you go then and we’ll meet you in half an hour. Merry, you are going to stand me a pint, you realize that, even if you’ve given away all your money? After sneaking up on me like that and taking the race right away from me – !" Mr. Pippin waved us off and steered Mr. Merry toward the paddocks, keeping up a stream of nonsense as they went.

The three of us headed for the beer tent – which in spite of its name, served other drinks as well, and food, too – stopping along the way for Sam to buy my hat. Nothing would do but I must try on every hat in the stall, for him to decide which one looked best on me, and him and Mr. Frodo had the stall-keeper in stitches arguing the merits of white straw with yellow buttercups, or pale green with white roses. At last I put a stop to their joshing by picking it out for myself, a lacy, open weave of pink straw, with pink roses.

“It’s me will be wearing it, and I like pink,” I said firmly, and clapped it on my head. Sam reached in his pocket to pay for it, and before I could look in the glass and adjust it, Mr. Frodo turned me to face him and arranged it himself, tipping it a little to one side and pulling my hair forward to frame my face.

“There, Sam, don’t you think you married the prettiest lass in the Shire?”

“You’re not telling me nothing I didn’t know already, Mr. Frodo!”

We walked on through the Fairgrounds, me in my new pink hat and my darling on my arm, and Mr. Frodo beside us, happy and carefree for once. The sun was shining and Mr. Merry had won his race – and Mr. Pippin was getting as much enjoyment out of teasing him for it, as if he’d come in first himself – and it was Overlithe, the best Overlithe I ever remember, before or since.

Chapter 15: The First School

in which Frodo finds a new use for his dining room

“And where were you thinking to put this school, Mr. Frodo?” Sam asked.

We’d been back from the Fair a couple of days, and we were lingering over breakfast, it being too hot to really want to get up and do anything. Frodo had been thinking out loud how he could approach families with children, to talk them into letting the lads come to school.

Mr. Frodo gave him a look of indescribable innocence, but there was mischief in his eyes.

“Well, I'll be the schoolmaster, of course, since the idea is to give me a break from the writing. So I’d like it to be someplace convenient, and I thought the dining room would do nicely.”

Sam spluttered and choked on his tea. I slapped him on the back and he mopped himself up with his napkin before he answered.

“The dining room – of course! And once you get it all cluttered up with slates and pencils and copybooks and what-all mess a school can provide, there won’t be no choice but for you to take all your meals in the kitchen, will there?”

Frodo shrugged. “I always did prefer the kitchen.” There was a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and when he met Sam's eyes they both laughed.

“Right you are, Mr. Frodo. You’re the Master! But when company comes, all that school clutter goes in a basket out to the pantry, and we serve you in the dining room like the gentlehobbit you are, sir.”

It was easy enough for Mr. Frodo to decide to start a school, but not so easy to get students for it. Folk didn’t see much value in having their little ones learn their letters, not when it would keep them from weeding the garden or picking berries or a dozen other chores that Hobbiton youngsters commonly did. In the end it was Sam who found the way to bring them in.

“Feed them,” he said. “Nine chances out of ten, that’s why the Gaffer let Mr. Bilbo teach me – I got second breakfast and many times lunch as well, at Bag End. It takes a lot of grub to fill up young hobbits, and every little bit helps. But don’t think you’ll get ’em to your school during harvest, Mr. Frodo! Their parents need 'em at home then, whether you feed them or not.”

So the school was begun in haste, to get it underway before harvest began. Mr. Frodo went round Hobbiton and down the New Row, talking to the fathers about the usefulness of being able to keep records -- types of seed and crop results, just what sort of harness had been asked for and by whom, who had paid for their order of ironmongery and who had not. I followed a few days later, visiting with the mothers over cups of tea, promising second breakfast and elevenses and a good noon dinner for any child who came to school. And Sam made it his business to cross paths with as many of the youngsters as he could, telling tantalizing snippets of Elven tales to whet their appetites.

Within a fortnight, we had half-a-dozen little lads perched on the big chairs in the dining room. Lads only, of course. Schools were few and far between in the Shire, and Hobbiton had never had one. To send their lads to school was novelty enough – no chance at all of folks sending their lasses.

I had mentioned to a few of the mothers that I was learning to read, myself, and they looked at me like I'd suddenly grown two heads.

"Well, mayhap you'll find it useful, working up at Bag End, dearie," one of them said at last. "If Mr. Baggins wants to leave you a note what he wants for dinner, say, or that it's time to order more beer…." I smiled and agreed, thankful that she had come up with an acceptable excuse for my odd activity.

The first day we had three students. Hob Goodbody was there, chubby and freckled, a lovable imp. His cousin, Polo Brownlock, taller, with serious brown eyes. And for a wonder, Ted Sandyman's little brother, Fosco.

Sam's eyebrows shot into his bangs when he saw Fosco coming up the walk. "What in the Shire is he doing here?" he muttered to Mr. Frodo. "I never said a word to him about no school."

"I called on his mother, Sam," Mr. Frodo said quietly. "It hasn't been easy for her, you know."

No, it wouldn't have been easy for Bloomie Sandyman. Her husband had died a year or so before the Troubles, and Ted had made enemies a-plenty for the family, toadying to Lotho like he had, and doing his dirty work. I looked sharp at little Fosco. Undersized for his age -- scrawny, even. A tight, thin little face with hooded eyes.

"His mother was very glad for him to have this chance. I suppose she was thinking primarily of the free food, and he certainly looks as if he needs it, wouldn't you say?"

Sam nodded. "He does, for a fact, Mr. Frodo. I just hope he don't break up your school for you – his brother was a rare one for starting trouble, when he was a lad. And he didn't change none."

Frodo shot him an amused glance. "Oh, I think I can manage him, Sam. He can't be much more of a problem than Smeagol!"

Sam shouted with laughter and headed around back to his garden work.

I carried breakfast and elevenses in for them – Mr. Frodo had agreed that the lads should be kept to just the dining room, so's to disrupt the housekeeping as little as might be – and found them busily copying letters on their slates while Frodo went from one to another, helping and correcting. Sam had made the slates, using the one he'd had as a child for a model, and Mr. Pippin had sent over a supply of slate pencils from the school at Great Smials.

"I wonder if he asked the schoolmaster, or just – er – liberated them," Mr. Frodo mused when the box from Tuckborough arrived. There were copybooks, too, and pens, and a large bottle of washable ink.

When I carried noon dinner into the dining room, students and master were gathered by the open window. They had thrown the chair cushions down on the floor to loll about on, and were listening, spellbound, while Mr. Frodo told them of Bilbo and the trolls. Three little mouths were hanging open, three sets of eyes wide as saucers. Fosco Sandyman was sitting a little apart from the others, as caught up in the story as any of them.

By week’s end all six lads were coming most days, and the room wasn’t as quiet as it’d been with only the three. The boys got restless as the morning wore on, and Mr. Frodo, he started letting them go outside for a break after elevenses. It gave us a chance to clear the table and spread the cushions on the floor, before he called them in for their story.

After the way he’d talked about stories, legends, before he started the school, I was surprised to see how much time Mr. Frodo gave to telling the lads tales. He was a natural storyteller – listening to him, you felt carried right into the middle of whatever adventure he was recounting -- and I got in the habit of pulling up a chair just outside the open door, catching up on the mending while I listened in. I’m sure he knew I was there but he didn’t seem to mind, and the lads couldn’t see me so it didn’t distract them none.

The first week he told about Bilbo’s adventures. The next week he went back, “Now what Bilbo didn’t know,” he said, and he started telling about the Dwarves, about

Moria and how they lost that kingdom, and how Smaug came to the Lonely Mountain. Then he told about the Elves – the Silmarils and Beren and all – and I realized that the tales were really history, but told so enticingly that the lads didn’t think they were having a lesson at all.

And I'm sitting here myself, I thought, listening just for the pleasure of the tale, no matter if it’s real history or not.

But Fosco Sandyman being there was bound to cause trouble eventually. It began with Balco Grubb, the middle of the second week.

Balco was a little older than the others, bigger and stronger, and he wanted no part of school in the first place. His father was blacksmith in Hobbiton, and thought it’d be handy to have someone in the family lettered, to keep accounts. Balco couldn’t refuse to come, with his big, burly father standing over him, but he didn’t have to like it.

He was surly with Mr. Frodo, but Frodo didn’t appear to notice. With the other lads, being older and stronger, he took what he wanted – the sharpest pencil, the fattest cushion, the last cherry tart. They backed off and let him have whatever he’d a mind to grab.

They were outside having their break the day things came to a head. We heard some commotion, shouting, and Balco’s voice ringing over them all.

“Aw, run on home and tell your big, mean brother, little poop-face, and I’ll beat him up too! Your family’s not hot stuff around here no more – why don’t you just pack up and leave? Like it’s not bad enough listening to cracked old Frodo all morning, without having to smell you, too!”

“Why that ungrateful little –“ I began indignantly, but Frodo shushed me.

There was a heartbeat of silence, then a shrill voice.

"He is not either cracked! You take that back, Balco Grubb!"

There was a positive roar of noise. Mr. Frodo was out the door with me behind him, but by the time we reached the lads, Sam had broken it up. He held little Fosco by both arms round the middle, and still the child was struggling to get loose, kicking and trying to push his arms away, wild with rage. Balco stood staring at him, holding his ear, blood dripping onto his shirt.

“Rose, take Balco in the kitchen and clean him up, will you?” Mr. Frodo’s voice was as calm as ever.

I led him away. In the kitchen I took his shirt and set it to soak in cold water while I saw to his ear. It looked as if Fosco had bitten clean through it and tried to tear it off. Another few minutes, I thought, and he might have succeeded.

Sam came in carrying Fosco over one shoulder, still kicking but oddly silent.

“You want down, you’ll have to quit kicking me,” he said to the child. The kicking stopped.

“And stand still, mind! No more fighting!” He slid the lad to the floor but held on to him, just in case. Fosco glared at Balco, but made no move toward him.

Fosco was a mess. Both eyes were blackened and his nose dripped blood. His shirt was half ripped from his skinny body. Sam went down on one knee and began unbuttoning it.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

Neither boy answered, and at last I said, “Balco don’t want to be in school, seemingly.”

“No?” Sam said, looking over at the bigger boy. “Figure if you beat someone up, Mr. Frodo’ll throw you out?”

“Be more like it if he threw out that little runt! Don’t need the likes of him in no school – don’t need him in Hobbiton! Not him nor any of his kin!”

“At least I want to be here! At least I give Mr. Frodo some respect!” There were tears in Fosco’s voice, but he wasn’t giving in. He looked like he might fly at Balco again, and Sam kept a grip on his arm.

“Right you are, lad. Steady now. Rosie lass, put his shirt to soak, will you, while I find them something clean to wear?”

He brought out a couple of his own work shirts, and I got some lumps of cold beef for Fosco's worsening shiners.

“Hold that to your eyes, lad -- sit down and lean over the table, now, I don’t want no drips down my clean shirt," Sam told him. "Balco, you go sit over by the fireplace, away from him.”

“I don’t need to sit no place. I’m going home.”

“Oh I don’t think so, Balco, not quite yet.” Mr. Frodo came into the room. “I thought we’d just talk this over while we have dinner.”

"Will I bring the food into the dining room now, Mr. Frodo?" I asked.

"No, I sent the other lads home, Rose. We'll all eat in the kitchen today."

Chapter 16: Remembering Orcs in which Frodo learns that there are brothers and brothers

Mr. Frodo said no more, but went to wash his hands. I served the dinner, and all the while he was silent, sitting at the head of the table as if deep in thought. When he spoke at last, it was to Sam, not to the lads at all.

“Do you remember those orcs in Mordor, Sam?”

Sam looked at him from the corner of his eye. What was Mr. Frodo up to?

“Yes, Mr. Frodo, I remember a lot of orcs in Mordor. Just orcs in general, or did you have some special one in mind?”

“Those two that were tracking us in the Morgai. Do you remember what you said about them?”

“Wait, let me think. There was a big one, seemed like he was the boss, one of the Uruks, wasn’t he? And a little black fellow, the tracker. Gollum had muddied up our trail – that’s one time he was good for something – and the Uruk was all over the tracker because they couldn’t find us. They got to fighting, and the little tracker shot an arrow in the big one and run off.”

"And you said –"

“I said, if this nice friendliness would spread around in Mordor, half our work would be done for us. And you said that was the spirit of Mordor, that hatefulness.”

“Yes. And remember, Sam, that first night back in the Shire? When we started finding out what had been going on, and some of the lads were afraid to talk to us in case someone carried tales back to Lotho, you said we’d come home to a lot of ‘orc talk’. And you were right.”

The two boys had been listening while they ate, plainly expecting one of Mr. Frodo’s tales, but he didn’t say any more, just took another helping of chicken.

“Are you lads getting enough?” he asked them. “Rosie, give Fosco another dumpling, will you? He needs some ballast, or when the autumn winds come he’s apt to blow away on us.”

Balco muttered something that I didn’t catch.

“I’m sorry, Balco, what did you say?” Mr. Frodo looked at the lad, and he flushed to the roots of his hair and burst out,

“I said, it’d do him good to go hungry! His folks had plenty while the rest of the Shire scrambled for what they could find!”

“Hmm.” Mr. Frodo took another bite. “What do you say, Fosco, was there plenty of food at your house during the Troubles?”

Fosco looked up at him like a small animal caught in a trap. “No! Do I look like I’d been eating fat? I know Ted had enough, and he had pipeweed and beer, too, what hobbits mostly couldn't get. But he hardly ever came home anyway– him and his pals holed up in the Bag End cellar, when they weren’t going round the Shire helping the ruffians with their “gathering”. When he did come home, he was drunk, and we stayed out of his way, Mum and me."

“Why was that?”

“He’s mean when he’s drunk, Ted is. He hits Mum, even, and if I tell him leave her alone, he beats me up good.” He looked down at his plate. “When I get big –" He didn’t finish.

Frodo’s voice was soft. "When you get big –"

“I’ll kill him.”

There wasn't a sound in the room. Sam opened his mouth and shut it again. Frodo poured himself another mug of tea.

“And after that?” he said finally.

“What do you mean?” Fosco sounded wary.

“Well, you won’t be able to stay in Hobbiton, after you kill your brother. I don’t know just what the Mayor and the Thain would do about it – we’ve never had a situation like that, in the whole history of the Shire – but I’m sure they wouldn’t let you stay. Or your mother either, probably. I suppose you’d have to go out to Bree, or even farther. Probably farther – the tale would follow you to Bree, and a murderer wouldn’t be welcome there, either. I feel sorry for you, Fosco.”

“I’m more sorry for his mother! One son a bully and a traitor – not to mention a fool, but that’s no crime – and the other plotting murder! Don’t hardly sound like the Shire at all.”

“No, it sounds more like the orcs, doesn’t it Sam? I never had a brother, so I can’t say I really understand – did you have trouble with your older brothers beating you up?”

“The Gaffer wouldn’t’ve allowed no such nonsense, Mr. Frodo. Not that my brothers were anything like Ted Sandyman – that Ted, he was a bully from the day he first walked out his garden gate – but any rough stuff, my Gaffer put it down quick and hard.”

“Mine, too.” It was Balco, and I looked round in surprise. “Me and Bingo got to fighting one day, and Da made us carry an iron ploughshare by hand, four miles to the farm to deliver it, instead of taking the wagon. Him holding one side and me the other – Da said he’d teach us to get along, if he didn’t do nothing else all day.”

“He’s a wise man, your father,” said Frodo.

“My Da thought it was funny, when Ted pounded me,” Fosco said softly. "He said I was a runt."

I tried to imagine my Da reacting that way, did one of my big brothers hurt any of the little ones. Not ever in this world, I thought. They wrestled and had sparring matches, for sure, but it was good-natured, and the time Tom bumped Nibs into the barn wall by accident and gave him a black eye, Tom felt worse about it than Nibs himself. He did Nibsie’s chores the rest of the week to make up, and Da never had to say a word.

“Da used to beat Mum, too.” Fosco didn't look up from his mug of tea, and he followed this shocking statement with a long drink, till he had to come up for air.

“And that’s why Ted thinks it’s all right to do the same.” Mr. Frodo’s voice was mild, but his eyes looked like someone had been beating him up.

“What about now, Fosco? Is Ted living at home?” Sam asked.

“Aye, he’s there,” Fosco said bitterly. “Comes in late, drunk, and busts things up afore he passes out on the couch in the kitchen. Sleeps till the middle of the afternoon, and Mum dasn’t cook or make any noise to wake him up. And when he does wake up, she has to look sharp to get a meal for him, or he knocks her around. I wanted to stay and help her, like, but she won't let me so I keep away till he leaves with his mates. She says she'd stay clear of him too, but she's afraid he’d burn the place down, getting his own meal.”

"Where do you go, when you can't go home?" said Frodo.

Fosco didn't answer, and Balco shifted in his chair, reached for another piece of bread, drew his hand back, picked up his spoon, set it down. The silence got uncomfortably long, and Frodo looked at Balco and raised his eyebrows.

"He was hiding out under the bridge." Balco was looking over in the corner of the room like there was something there to see, which there wasn't. He moistened his lips. "We chased him out, us lads, told him to go on home. A week or two ago, it was. I don't know where he goes now."

"I climb one of the trees in the orchard." He looked at Frodo pleadingly. "I don't pick nothing, honest! Nor I don't break any branches; I'm careful! I have to go somewheres, Mr. Frodo –"

The child was fighting back tears, knuckling his eyes and sitting up very straight. Mr. Frodo pushed back his chair.

"Come here, lad."

Fosco stared at him a long moment, as if deciding whether to run. At last he scrambled down from his chair and went to stand before Frodo. Sam's shirt was like a tent on him, hanging almost to his ankles, and I wondered suddenly how old he was, how many years between him and Ted.

Frodo rested his hands lightly on the child's shoulders, talking to him as one hobbit to another.

"You're a brave lad, trying to protect your mother, but that isn't your task, Fosco. That's for grown hobbits to take in hand, and we will, now we know there's a problem. Your task is to grow up to be a hobbit your mother can be proud of, and that she can depend on when she gets old. It sounds as if she's had a great many things to make her sorry. I don't think you want to add to that."

Fosco shook his head without speaking, looking into Frodo's eyes.

"So you can't kill Ted, you see, because that would not help your mother; it would only give her more to be sorry about. But I think it would be a good idea if you learned to defend yourself from him, and from any other hobbits who try to bully you."

And so help me, if Balco didn't speak up, as serious and respectful as Sam would've been, talking to the master!

"I'll learn him, Mr. Frodo. I'll learn him to fight, so no one can beat him up. My cousin used to torment me when I was little, and I learned how to fight back against someone bigger. I don't have to any more –" He grinned, and so did we all – he was near as big as Sam, not an inviting target for any bully. "I still remember how, though. I can learn him."

"Good! You teach him to defend himself, and I'll see what can be done to protect his mother. And now you'd better be getting home. Rosie has the washing up to do, and I need to be working on my book."

"Mr. Frodo, wait! Fosco can't go home like that – well, look at him, in Sam's shirt! I'll have to see what I can do about his clothes first."

"Nor when he gets his own shirt back, I don't fancy him climbing around in the orchard, neither. You come to me, lad, when you get your clothes on. I'll keep you out of harm's way – keep you busy, too, mind!" Sam turned to Frodo. "You might give a thought to how you're going to keep his mother safe, Mr. Frodo, before you lose yourself in that book again."

Frodo sighed. "You're right, of course. First things first. Balco, will you take a letter to the Quick Post for me? Wait while I write it; I'll only be a moment."

Chapter 17: Reparation

in which Bag End entertains guests

School went better after that. During the lads' break time, Balco taught Fosco how to fight, while the others watched and offered their own suggestions. We could hear them shouting while we tidied the schoolroom – "Get him behind the knee, Fos!" "Grab his arm!" "Get him! No!" "He's down….!"

Sam came in one day grinning. "Sounds like you're training young guardsmen out there, only for hand combat, like! When're you going to start fencing lessons, Mr. Frodo?"

"I'll save that for you, Sam, when you're Mayor."

"There you go – about the time you're Thain, I'd say that'll be."

"No, I plan to be the Hermit of Bag End, when I get past being schoolmaster," Frodo said cheerfully, and Sam grimaced.

"That's too near the truth for a proper jest, that is. You don't hardly see no one now, save Rose and me, except for the lads. You need to get out more, Mr. Frodo."

To my surprise, Frodo nodded. "I believe you're right, Sam. Shall we walk into Bywater this evening, see who's at the Dragon?"

After supper, we all walked into Bywater, but I turned off at the farm lane to go visit my mother. I still wasn't feeling well, most days, and Mum was getting a name as an herb woman, after all her years doctoring our big family. Maybe she'd know something better than peppermint for this everlasting queasiness.

She gave me a little sack of candied ginger and another of raspberry leaf tea – and a skein of the softest, most delicate wool in her workroom.

"Didn't waste much time, the pair of you!" she said, but she was smiling. "Walk all you can, and when you sit down, put your feet up. And don't say nothing to Sam for at least a month, just in case."

"Don't you think he'll guess, looking at me?" I felt suddenly like it must be written on my forehead for all the world to see, and I couldn't decide if I was more happy and excited, or plain scared.

She laughed and drew me over to a rocking chair. "Not unless he's a good bit more noticing than any menfolks I've had to do with, Rosie. They don't see much, unless you hit 'em over the head with it."

Sam and Mr. Frodo came back with Da, and we had a late snack before we started home.

My father saw us to the door with a hand on Frodo's shoulder. "I'll have the neighbors at your place tomorrow day, Mr. Frodo. We'll see if we can't sort this out for the good of all concerned."

"What was that all about?" I asked, as soon as we were in the lane.

"Getting the farmers together to see about the Mill, Rosie," said Sam. "Seems like Ted has been slow about rebuilding it, after Lotho's monstrosity was tore down – he's only about half done, and harvest coming on. Says he ain't got the money to finish."

"Which might be true enough," said Frodo. "And he'd find it hard to get workers, too, as unpopular as he is. It's asking a lot to expect one hobbit, all alone, to build something of that size."

I remembered the long ride to Frogmorton Mill, during the Troubles. "I'd think the neighbors would help him, if only to have a mill in the village," I said.

"That's what I think, too. And if money is the issue, I've still got some of what Lobelia left me, to help hobbits hurt by the Troubles."

I heard Sam chuckle in the darkness. "She may come back and haunt you, Mr. Frodo, you use her money to help Ted Sandyman! I doubt that's who she had in mind!"

"Maybe not, but he was hurt as badly as anyone, and worse than many others. In any event, Rosie is right – having the Mill here will help everyone in the neighborhood. And if Ted is kept occupied with his proper business, he may drink less and cause less misery to his family."

"Maybe," Sam said doubtfully. "Drinking or not, Ted's always been a troublemaker."

The neighbors gathered in the parlor two evenings later, and it was an occasion! Mr. Frodo looked every inch the Master of Bag End in a brocade waistcoat and fine linen shirt with ruffles at his wrists. The white jewel round his neck flashed in the firelight and I saw several of the farmers staring at it, as I passed around stuffed mushrooms and sausage pockets. Sam served the drinks, and I about burst with pride, he looked so fine. It was fun to have company, after so many months of just the three of us rattling around the place.

There was a lot of discussion and a little shouting, but in the end it was all settled like Mr. Frodo said. The farmers would help rebuild the Mill, Ted would go back to running it, and Mr. Frodo would put up the money.

They were mostly very grateful for Frodo's help, but there was an awkward moment when old Longo Boffin remarked sourly, "Aye, and it's only right Mr. Baggins pays the damages – wouldn't have the problem in the first place had he not sold Bag End to that worthless cousin of his!"

I was afraid Sam would empty the brandy decanter over the fellow's head, and there was a gabble of consternation from the others present, but Mr. Frodo stilled it with his hand.

"Never mind, friends, I'm afraid there's some truth in that. I could hardly have found a worse buyer for Bag End than I did. So we'll call this my reparation to the community, and make the new Mill better than the old."

They went home soon after that, and Mr. Frodo sat before the parlor fire with his feet up while Sam and I carried glasses and plates out to the kitchen. He looked worn out, his arms hanging over the sides of the chair and his head flung back, eyes closed.

"Why is he so tired?" I whispered to Sam while we washed up. "It's no more than nine o'clock, and he looks so exhausted, you'd think he'd been pitching hay all day in the sun, not visiting with a couple dozen neighbors."

"Don't know, Rosie. I could've brained Longo, though – of all the churlish things to say! If it had been up to him to save the Shire by giving up everything he owned and going a long journey into darkness, Sauron would be ruling Middle Earth tonight!"

"What he said was true, nonetheless." I jumped and dropped a plate, and it shattered on the stone floor. Frodo had come in so quiet, we hadn't known he was there.

"I sold Bag End to Lotho, and that's what started the trouble. It's up to me to make things right, as far as I can." Sam started to contradict him, and he laid a finger across his lips. "I didn't like it either, Sam. Truth hurts, they say. Good-night."

I couldn't bear it. I'd heard enough of what happened to them on the Quest to know the whole Shire ought to be hanging honors around his neck, and here some curmudgeon was blaming him instead, and he was taking the blame! I hurried after him down the passage and grabbed his hand.

"Mr. Frodo, I've never thanked you, and I should have. The rest of them maybe don't understand, but I know what you did, and what it meant." I took a deep breath and said as solemn as I could, "Thank you for saving the Shire, Frodo Baggins."

He looked down at me and the light was dim in the passage, so I couldn't hardly see his face. But he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. "You're welcome, Rose Gamgee," he said, and then he went in his room and closed the door.

Sam was very quiet as we got ready for bed. I blew out the candle and cuddled up to him, and I could feel him trembling in the dark.

"Oh, Sam…."

"I'm glad you went after him like that, Rosie. I couldn't think what to say, nor he wouldn't've listened anyway, but that was exactly right. There's no one like him, not in Middle Earth! The King himself – he's a great man and a good one, but he didn't suffer half what Mr. Frodo did, and he's got a kingdom to show for it. What's Mr. Frodo got? His home near ruined, his hand maimed, all the laughter gone out of his eyes, and the folk who should be thanking him are bellyaching because they don't like who he sold his smial to, when he went into exile! Reparation! It's them as needs to make reparation to him, for being so ungrateful!"

I held onto him, rubbing his back and stroking his hair. He didn't say no more, but I could feel him shaking for a long while before his breathing evened out and I knew he was asleep.

Chapter 18: School’s Out

in which the King's Messenger comes to Hobbiton

Once everyone was helping with the construction, the Mill was finished pretty quick. And then, sooner than seemed possible, harvest was beginning. We'd got a month of school in, more or less. The last day of school Mr. Frodo invited Sam and me into the schoolroom, so the lads could show off what they had learned.

They had each written the alphabet, great letters and small, on their slates. The slates were lined up on the big table and in the middle was a large sheet of parchment listing their names. Frodo Baggins, Schoolmaster, was written across the top, and below that each lad had penned his own name as neatly as might be. The letters were wobbly, in some of them, and Balco's name was barely legible, the B marred by a big blot of ink, but the names marched down the page bravely, for all that.

"It's an historical document, the roster of Hobbiton's first school," said Mr. Frodo. "And we want you to sign it, too. There'd be no school, if Master Samwise and Mistress Rose weren't here to help."

He led me over to the table and put the pen in my hand, and I near laughed out loud at the expressions on the lads' faces. For certain they never thought I could write my name! I signed Rose Cotton Gamgee at the end of the list, trying to write as neat and elegant as Mr. Frodo, without leaving a blot. Sam wrote his name under mine. His letters weren't elegant, but square and strong.

"And now the recitations," Frodo announced. "I've been telling stories all these past weeks since we began. Today the lads will show how well they've been listening."

He brought us over to three chairs lined up by the fireplace, and we sat. Balco stood before us, looking a little nervous, and the lads gathered around him.

"You told us we had to pick a tale and tell it back to you, sir, but you didn't say it had to be one you told us. So we decided on a different one, that Master Samwise told Fosco while they were working in the garden."

I sneaked a look at Mr. Frodo, and his face was a study -- he hadn't expected this. Fosco came forward and began,

"Outside the Shire, on the edge of Buckland, is an old, old Forest. Dangerous it is, and full of malice, and wise hobbits don't go in the place. But in time of peril you go where you must, and one foggy morning there were four hobbits went through the Forest Gate, carrying a ring of power and doom…."

He went on how they got lost and turned around in the Old Forest, and then Hob Goodbody took over and told about Merry and Pippin falling asleep by Old Man Willow, and being swallowed up by the tree. One by one the lads stepped out and carried the story forward, all the way to their escape from the Barrow-wight and Tom Bombabil leaving them outside the gates of Bree.

"So if ever you're forced by need or fate, to travel from the Shire, see you take a few trusty friends along, for cheer and help along the road," Balco ended at last, and the lads stood all in a row and bowed. Sam and I clapped enthusiastically, and Mr. Frodo joined in, laughing.

"The pupils have turned the tables on the master today, it seems! Well done, lads, very well done! We'll have Master Samwise in to tell tales for us, when school starts up again, shall we?"

"Can he tell one today, before dinner?" Fosco asked eagerly.

Frodo eyed Sam as if he thought he owed him something, a gleam in his eye. "Yes, I believe that's a good idea, Fos. Not his own adventures, either – something from his schooldays. Gil-galad, Sam?"

I brought in elevenses, and all the while we ate Sam sat in the chimney corner, muttering to himself. When we got done and cleared away, and the lads came in from their break, he stood before the window, his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes on the opposite wall.

"Gil-galad was an Elven king, of him the harpers sadly sing –"

When he ran out of words – he told me later he never had known the whole thing – Mr. Frodo went and stood next to him, a hand on his shoulder, and recited the rest, all the way to the end. And the lads sat quiet before them, drinking in the old story of courage and sorrow.

Fosco kept coming to Bag End, even after school ended. He was too puny to be much use in the harvest field, and it seemed like his mother was afraid to have him home, now Ted was awake in the daytime and working at the Mill.

"Can you find something for him to do in the garden, Sam? I know he's been helping a bit in the afternoons, but I mean a real job – something I can pay him for. Will he be too much trouble for you?"

We were at breakfast, and Sam took a bite of egg while he thought about it.

"I can keep him busy," he said finally. "It's a waste of your coin, though, Mr. Frodo – it's not like I need the help."

"Not my coin – Lobelia's. And I can't think of a better use for it than helping Fosco and his mother. I think they've suffered almost more than anyone else in Hobbiton, from Lotho's mischief. They went through all the hardship everyone else did, during the Troubles, and add to that the scorn of their neighbours because of Ted. The bad times are over for the rest of the Shire, but not for them."

"I hadn't thought of it like that, but you're right, Mr. Frodo. I'll have the lad work with me, if you say so."

"Keep on telling him stories, Sam. As much as his mother needs the coins, Fosco needs to hear about friendship, and courage, and kindness. He's seen all too little of any of them."

Sam nodded thoughtfully, buttering a scone. "I'll do that," he said.

So Fosco came to be gardener's lad, and he was there early and late. He was loitering outside the door when Sam went out after breakfast, and after a few days of this, Mr. Frodo went and called him in to eat with us, and then worked with him on his reading a while, before he went outside to help Sam. He was supposed to go home at teatime, but he rarely did. He haunted Bag End like a stray cat you've fed once too often.

He worked willingly enough in the garden, Sam told me, though he was quite as likely to pull up a row of beets as the weeds he was after. Sam had to watch him pretty close. When the day's work was over he lingered, sitting against the wall of the garden shed watching the sunset, or hanging around outside the chicken run.

I called him over to me one afternoon and gave him a basket. "Want to gather the eggs for me? I'll pay you in seedcake if you don't crack any, and if you find more than the six I need for breakfast, you can take the rest home to your Mum."

He was sullen-looking child most of the time, but at that he gave a big grin. He came back in half an hour with nine eggs, uncracked and clean as a whistle.

"I wiped them off with some leaves for you, Mistress Rose. There's one hen hiding a nest in a hole under the floor. Can I honest take some home?"

Did he really think I'd promise that and then go back on my word? What kind of hobbits did this lad run with, anyway? I gave him enough seedcakes to fill his pockets and helped him wrap up the extra eggs in one of Sam's old handkerchiefs, padded with leaves. He gathered the eggs for me from that day forward.

At week's end Mr. Frodo paid him, and he pranced off home happy as a new lamb in clover, with his few coins and his little bundle of fresh eggs. I watched him down the Hill with a warm feeling in my heart – what a different-seeming lad he was now, from the shifty-eyed urchin who'd come to the door when school began!

I was plenty busy the next day. Merry and Pippin were coming for a visit, to help Mr. Frodo with the book. They'd be at Bag End by teatime, probably, so I wanted it to be a special meal. And of course with company staying, we'd be going back to late dinner – we'd been having it at noon because of the school, and Mr. Frodo said to just leave it that way when school ended.

"I seem to sleep better, without that big meal in the evening," he said, and I thought he looked better, too. He was filling out some, not that he was ever what you'd call stout, but he was losing that peaked look he'd had for so long. But we couldn't serve noon dinner and a cold supper to Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, like as if they were farmers.

With one thing and another, that day, I didn't notice Fosco wasn't around. Sam mentioned it at lunchtime, wondering where he was, but I had my mind on dinner and didn't pay much attention.

I set the dining room table for three and put on a clean apron to serve them, and Sam went down cellar for the wine. The next thing I knew, Mr. Pippin burst into the kitchen and just scooped me up and carried me off! Mr. Merry was holding open the dining room door, laughing like it was the best joke he'd seen in a month, and Pippin set me down in a chair by the table and kept his arms either side of me so's I couldn't get up. And then Mr. Frodo came out of the dish closet carrying plates and silverware and set two more places at the table, and by the time Sam got there I was sitting at table with the three of them, and they were holding their sides from laughter.

I held my breath when he came in with the wine, wondering what in the Shire he'd say – and he didn't say nothing at all, just looked at Mr. Frodo, accusing like.

Mr. Frodo stopped laughing and went over to him. "I'm sorry Sam – we thought if we made a jest of it –"

"You can blame it on us, Sam," said Mr. Merry. "I understand how you feel about serving my cousin, and I'm grateful he has you to take care of him. But – well, Frodo asked us to talk about our part of the Quest, you know, and we'd like for you to hear it too. You and Rosie. Will you indulge us just for this visit, and have dinner with us? Next time we come we'll keep our proper place, I promise!"

The stiff sort of look on Sam's face softened and he chuckled.

"All right, Mr. Merry. I'll hold you to that, mind! Sit down now, sir, and let me serve the wine."

We settled down to eat, and Mr. Pippin began telling about what happened after Frodo left the Fellowship at Parth Galen, but he didn't get far.

"I'm sorry, Frodo – this just won't work. I can't sit here over beef and mushrooms and talk about an army of orcs bringing Boromir down with arrows –"

His voice trailed off and he took a gulp of wine, looking a bit sick.

"It's not exactly dinner table conversation, Frodo," Merry said quietly. "Do you and Sam really sit over dinner night after night and talk about Mordor? I'm not surprised you're thinner than any hobbit has a right to be! How do you keep your appetite, Sam?"

I'd got so used to tales of terror at dinner, I never gave it a thought – Sam was helping Mr. Frodo with his book, was all. Now that Mr. Merry said that, I could see what he meant, but Sam kind of half smiled and took another bite.

"I just think how thankful I am to be eating good Shire cooking instead of lembas – not meaning no insult to the lembas; I was mighty grateful to have 'em, once upon a time, and I'd have been glad to have a good bit more of 'em! But lembas can't hold a candle to Rosie's cooking, and that's a fact."

Mr. Frodo looked embarrassed. "You're right, Merry – I never thought about it. It's not fit conversation for dinner. We'll save the Quest for morning, and hope for a sunny day. What's the news from Buckland?"

Mr. Pippin kept us laughing with his tales of their exploits – they were cutting a wide swath among the lasses of the Shire, seemingly, and had more invitations to dinner than there were nights in the week. When they weren't being dined round the Shire, they were throwing their own parties at Crickhollow.

"Now we're here, Frodo, we'll have to start on your birthday – it's only three weeks off, hardly time to plan a proper celebration, but –"

"Just as well; I don't want more than a few friends, Pippin, not what you'd call a party at all! I do want you two, though – I hope you're planning to stay?"

"Of course we're planning to stay, cousin; just try and get rid of us! Who else do you want? Fatty Bolger, of course, and Folco –"

"Yes, and I think that's all. The same old friends who were here the birthday before I left Bag End – it'll come full circle, having the same group now I'm home again. And this time when we drink Bilbo's health, we'll know where he is – we didn't, last time!"

Merry nodded. "That's a strange thought, isn't it? Only two years ago – there's a lot we didn't know then that we've learned since. Good and bad."

After dinner Pippin and Merry were bound to go into Bywater, to the Dragon, and they wouldn't let Mr. Frodo off, for all his wish to stay home.

"I'll ransack my memory for you, cousin. I'll go back and relive the whole ghastly orc-drag across Middle Earth so you can put it in your book, and I'll dredge up any other unpleasant memory you care to hear – but in return you've got to come to the Dragon with us! Fair is fair, Frodo. If you insist on entertaining your guests with their worst nightmares, at least you have to allow them their evenings out! And it's no fun if you don't come too."

Merry chuckled and handed Frodo his cloak. "Eloquently put, and he's absolutely right. Don't argue, Frodo!"

They went off laughing, but they came back sober, in more ways than one. Mr. Frodo was dead silent, but his eyes blazed and I realized with a start that I had never seen him angry. He was angry now, cold furious, and he went straight to the sideboard and poured a draught of brandy, tossing it down and shaking his head after.

"Who was that fellow?" Pippin asked. "I mean, he was unsavory enough, no question, and I wouldn't want to be his little brother, but what is it to you, cousin? I've been hearing stories of the Old Took and his masterful ways all my life, but I never thought I'd see a demonstration – and certainly not from you!"

Sam had taken Frodo's cloak and hung it up. He took his arm now and led him to a chair before the fire.

"Sit down, Master, and have a smoke, peaceful like. Who was it – Ted?"

"It was Ted. all right, treating his cronies to rounds of beer with my – that is, Lobelia's – coin. Bragging all the while how his good-for-naught runt of a brother was paying the tab with Mad Baggins's gold. I never thought I'd wish to kill another hobbit, Sam – I'm a fine one to talk to Fosco!"

"Ted took his earnings, then. Poor lad."

"Poor Ted, as well, I'd say." Merry's voice was quiet, but it held an undercurrent of amusement. "Your master rose up and threw the lot of them right out of the place, lordly as Elrond himself – you'd have thought he had an army of Elves at his back! The worthies of Bywater saw a side of Frodo Baggins they never knew was there – they'll be careful to stay the right side of him, after tonight!"

Sam stood by Frodo's chair, gripping his shoulder. "Good for you, Mr. Frodo! Ted's been needing that all his life, to run up against someone who won't tolerate his nastiness." He gave a short laugh. "You done a service for the Shire tonight, in a small way, as much as when you sent Sharkey packing."

I had been listening in, mending the fire and getting brandy for Merry and Pippin. Sam is making this too simple, I thought. What happens when Ted gets home, angry and shamed before his friends?

"What about Fosco?" I asked. "He wouldn't have given Ted that money, not unless he was forced. And he didn't come today."

Sam and Frodo turned to look at me. "Oh, no," Frodo whispered. 'If he's harmed that child –"

Sam was taking his cloak down from its hook. "We'll soon know," he said grimly.

"Hold on, Sam, you can't just go rushing off without a plan. Where do they live, this Ted and his brother?"

"The Mill, Mr. Merry. Ted's the miller – and his poor, undersized brother is one of Mr. Frodo's pupils, and my helper in the garden. If he's done that lad any real hurt, I'll throw him in his own millrace!"

"Come on, we'll plan as we go. Coming, Merry? Pippin?" Mr. Frodo was headed out the door, but Merry caught his arm.

"Half a minute, Frodo – get your sword, and that mithril shirt. Sam, into your mail and bring your sword along – quick, now!"

Frodo stared at Mr. Merry, horror on his face. "I'm angry, Merry, but I'm not ready to do murder, not yet!"

"Nor I wouldn't want to face Ted with my sword in hand, in case I might be tempted," said Sam.

"Not in your hand, just hanging at your side!" Pippin gave a crow of laughter and ducked into the guest room. He came out wearing his mail shirt, pulling his helmet on his head and buckling on his sword. "If the Ring-bearer in his wrath isn't enough to settle this bully, a visit from the Travellers – and the King's Messenger – may do the trick."

Sam smiled slowly. "It might at that – and Master Ted's face should be worth seeing!"

Moments later they filed out the front door, looking ready for battle. "Ponies?" Pippin asked. "It will take a few minutes to saddle them."

"It'll be worth taking the time; much more impressive if we arrive mounted. Now, hobbits!" It was Captain Merry back again, as he'd been before the Battle of Bywater. I smiled a little as I shut the door behind them. Ted Sandyman would never know what hit him. If only Fosco was unharmed!

Chapter 19:Family Matters

in which Rose sees another side of life

They brought Fosco back with them. He wasn't seriously injured – that is, nothing was broken – but he was very sore, and his right hand and wrist badly bruised. Ted had twisted his arm and bent his fingers back, taking his coins away from him. He was in high spirits, though, and all the while I was poulticing his hand he was recounting the visit of the Travellers to the Mill.

"Ted told Mum not to open when they knocked, and she was afeared to go against him. But they just hauled off and banged the door and it broke the latch right in half! And Master Samwise come in shouting for me and I was hiding in the broom cupboard because Ted had come in drunk and roaring what he was going to do to me. And Ted was hollering so I dasn't come out, but then Captain Merry and Captain Pippin hustled him out in the yard, and Master Sam said, 'Come on out, Fosco lad, where're you hiding? I didn't half get the potatoes dug today, without you to help me – you'd best come sleep at Bag End tonight, so's you can get to work on time.' So then I came out, and Mr. Frodo picked me right up on his shoulder, and he asked Mum could I come and spend the night. He let me ride on his pony with him, and Captain Pippin gave Ted a whipping with his riding crop!"

I gave him a cup of chamomile tea with plenty of milk, and finally he began to nod off.

"Shall I fix a pallet for him here in the kitchen, Mr. Frodo?"

"Do you think he'll be frightened, if he wakes up during the night, Rose? He might not remember where he is, or how he got here." He thought for a moment, then squatted down next to Fosco's chair.

"Fosco? Wake up just a minute, lad. Where do you sleep, when you're at home?"

The child's eyes half opened, cloudy with sleep. "With my Mum," he murmured.

Frodo nodded. "I thought that might be the case. So did I, when I was his age – my Mum and my Da and me, all three in one bed, like peas in a pod. All right, lad, you come sleep with me tonight."

He lifted him gently and carried him away down the passage, and I sat trying to imagine the master as a small hobbit lad, snuggled beside his parents in the family bed. He'd lost his parents so young, Sam had told me that, and he never spoke of them. I hadn't thought that he might have such sweet memories of them.

It was a merry breakfast the next morning, with Fosco badgering the Captains for stories about their adventures, and Mr. Pippin making him gasp in wonder and disbelief at his tales of talking trees and drinks that could make a hobbit grow inches overnight.

"Oh aye, we had to stop drinking those ent draughts, you know – had we kept on, we wouldn't fit inside any house in the Shire, and then we'd starve to death, never get a proper dinner again. Beanpoles we'd be, five feet high and so thin, if you looked at us sideways you couldn't see us at all. Better be eaten up by orcs and be done with it!"

"Pippin!" Merry protested.

"Just getting in form for the morning's work, Merry. A lovely trip into the past for Frodo's book – now how would you describe Grishnakh? Red eyes, pointy teeth – missing a few, I think – a poor complexion –"

Frodo laughed. "Well, don't waste it on breakfast, Pippin," he said, pushing back his chair. "Come on in the study and we'll get to it, while you're in the mood."

The cousins disappeared down the passage, and Fosco looked up at me. "I guess Mr. Frodo won't be reading with me while the Captains are here, will he?"

"I think he'll be busy with the book, Fos. I'll work with you, if you like. Did you know Master Sam is teaching me to read?"

"Aye, he said he was – but do you know enough to help me, Mistress Rose? You just started too, didn't you?"

I wasn't sure myself, if I knew enough, but Frodo was in his study and Sam was already outside, digging potatoes. It was me or nobody, and Fosco wanted his lesson.

"Get your slate, and we'll find out," I told him.

We sat together at the kitchen table, and I had another mug of tea while I helped him. I found I was quite a bit ahead of him – Sam must be a good teacher, I reflected – and it was fun working with him. We did pretty well together for about half an hour, but then he got restless, and his letters got a mite sloppy. It was a mercy he wrote left-handed, or he couldn't have managed at all with his hand so bruised.

"Time to stop," I said. "Off to the garden with you now; you've got a job to do!"

Around teatime there was a knock on the back door, and it was Fosco's mother. She slipped into the kitchen with a hunted look in her eyes, glancing over her shoulder.

"How is he?" she whispered.

"He's fine – he's out gathering eggs. Sit down, Bloomie, I'll make you some tea."

"No, I –" She looked flustered. "I shouldn't stay, only – I wanted to ask Mr. Frodo if he could see his way to keep Fosco here for awhile. I'm afraid to have him at home, Ted beats on him so –"

"Mr. Frodo's having tea in the parlor with his guests. I'll tell him you're here when I go to get the tray. Sit down, Bloomie, for pity sake! It'll be a few minutes. Do you really think Ted will bother Fosco again, after last night?"

"Oh, I don't know, Rose. Ted has always pounded Fosco, it's like a habit with him – he might leave him alone while he knows the Captains are at Bag End, but after that –"

I set a mug of tea before her with the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl. She ladled sugar into her tea till I would have gagged if it was me had to drink it – my word, it'll be like syrup, I thought.

"Want some seedcake, Bloomie? It's fresh, I baked today."

"Oh, thank you, Rose! I haven't had seedcake since I don’t know when – food is so dear, ever since the Troubles – we mostly just have porridge and whatever garden stuff I can grow."

No wonder Fosco was scrawny. Seemed Mr. Frodo had been right about the family's situation.

"How do you get by, Bloomie? Doesn't Ted help out?"

She laughed bitterly. "Ted, help out? If he gets a coin, it goes to the drink, either the Dragon or some homebrew from his mates. And where would he get a coin, anyway? Now the Mill is finished and harvest started, maybe he'll get some, but I doubt we'll see much good out of it, Fos and me."

"But Bloomie, why? You're his family, after all – blood is thicker than water, why wouldn't he help you, when he can?"

She shook her head. "Ted's no family of mine, Rose. He's from my husband's first marriage, didn't you know that? No, how would you know, you're from Bywater, I was forgetting. His mother died when he was born, and I married his father when he was a half-growed lad. He never liked me, not from the first day I came in that house, and he's always hated Fosco. But the Mill is the only inheritance Jok left, so we've had to share it, the three of us, whether we got along or not."

Oh, my. I'd had no idea there were hobbits who lived this way, no idea there were families like this in the Shire. Suddenly I felt lucky, and almost ashamed of my good luck. I'd always had my family, and now Sam – and there was the baby coming, though Sam didn't know it yet. And Mr. Frodo – there couldn't be, anywhere, a kinder master than Mr. Frodo.

"They must be done by now," I told Bloomie. "I'll go tell him you're here."

Mr. Frodo didn't seem surprised, and he followed me right out to the kitchen. Bloomie jumped up nervously when he came in, but he went over to her with a smile, and within minutes he had her tea warmed up, another mug for himself – for all he had just finished his own tea in the parlor – and was sitting chatting with her like they were old friends.

"I don't think Fosco has taken much hurt," he told her. "His hand is bruised, but Rose has a good knowledge of herbs from her mother, and she's tending it. I wanted to get him out of harm's way last night – if you hadn't come today, I would have called on you this evening. What are we to do for him, Mistress? Will Ted leave him in peace now, do you think?"

"No, sir, I don't think – leastways if he does, it'll be the first time he ever did! Could you keep him here, sir? I hate to ask, but I don't know how to keep him safe, I surely don't. Seems like Ted can't look at the lad without wanting to pound him, and now he's home running the Mill – Fosco's here all day anyhow working, and I can't tell you how grateful I am, Mr. Frodo, you taking an interest in him that way! If you could just find him a corner to sleep in, so's he needn't come near Ted at all? I'll find someplace else for him to go, sir, just as soon as I can – but until I can find somewhere –"

She was crying by then, poor thing, and Mr. Frodo gave her his own handkerchief and sat patting her back soothingly.

"What about yourself, Mistress? Are you safe at the Mill with Ted there?"

"I'll be all right. It's Fos I'm worried about."

And at that moment Fosco banged into the kitchen, carrying the egg basket. "Mum!" he cried, running over to her. "Mum, what's wrong, why are you crying? Why is she crying?" he demanded, turning on Mr. Frodo.

"Shh, it's all right, Fosco, she's had a hard time. Give her a hug, lad, let her know you're alive and well. You're the pride of her life, you know that, don't you?"

Fosco flung his arms around his mother, burrowing up against her, and she hugged him back fiercely, looking up at Mr. Frodo.

"Will you, sir? Will you keep him here, safe?"

Frodo nodded. "I will, if he's willing to stay."

Fosco was not willing, not at first. It took all his mother's persuasion, to make him see that he could not protect her from Ted, that it only added to her burden of fear and unhappiness, worrying that Ted might really hurt him next time.

"Balco was teaching me," he said despondently. "He said I'd be able to fight back against someone bigger, but I tried what he showed me and it didn't work. It worked on the other lads, but not on Ted."

"Maybe you need to be bigger yourself, Fos," said Frodo. "Let Balco keep on teaching you, it's good to know how to defend yourself, but Ted may be more hobbit than you can handle for a few years yet."

Sam came in with a bushel of potatoes. "H'llo, Bloomie," he grunted, swinging it down from his shoulder. "That Ted any wiser than what he was last night?"

"Some folks don't never get no wiser, Sam Gamgee. He may stay out of the Dragon for awhile, though."

"Sam, I think we're going to keep Fos at Bag End for a time; what do you say?" Mr. Frodo sounded like he really wanted his opinion. Sam met his look, then let his eyes rest on Fosco, cuddled close to his mother, her arm around him.

"That's a serious thing, Mr. Frodo, breaking up a family. Still, if he's not safe at home –"

"Just till I find someplace else for him, someplace safe," Bloomie repeated.

"Well, don't stop looking for one, Bloomie – the lad needs his mother," Sam told her soberly. "You want to take some of these taters home with you? We've got a bumper crop, more than'll fit in the cellar, I don't doubt."

So Fosco came to stay, and the second morning Mr. Frodo had me start cleaning out one of the spare bedrooms for him.

"A lad as active as you needs a space of his own – and this poor old hobbit needs a bed to himself," he told Fos with a grin. "You kick worse than Bill the Pony, my lad – if Ted ever bothers you again, just kick him in the shins like you've been doing to me at night!"

Chapter 20: September Sunshine

in which laughter visits Bag End

It was pure pleasure, having the Captains there. Even reliving his worst nightmares for Frodo's book, like he said, Mr. Pippin was full of spirit and fun. He joked with us all constantly, telling impossible stories for Fosco's benefit, but always with an eye on Mr. Frodo to see his reaction. When he got one of Frodo's rare laughs, his face lit up and you could see that's what he'd been trying for all along.

Now that the Captains weren't telling their story over dinner, breakfast was the one meal we all took together. Mr. Frodo wouldn't give up his early morning spot by the kitchen fire, no matter how Sam tried to move them into the dining room.

"There's a chill in that room in the morning, even in the middle of July, never mind September! You get a fire going in there, Sam, and it will be livable by lunchtime, but not at this hour. Quit trying to chase me out of my warm corner and give me some tea!"

He was holding his hands out to the fire as if seeking its warmth, and he made a ferocious face at Sam, jesting. Mr. Pippin ducked away in mock terror.

"No impersonations of the Old Took at breakfast, Frodo, for heaven's sake! Rosie, quick, some ham and eggs – if my revered ancestor is joining us for the meal, I need something to fortify me!"

"Who is the Old Took?" Fosco asked.

"Oh, he was my great-great-grandfather – Captain Merry's, too – and Mr. Frodo's great-grandfather. He lived to be a hundred and thirty years old, and he held the Tookland in terrified awe his entire life. Not just hobbits, either, by any means. He was a friend of Gandalf the Grey, and I'm willing to wager Gandalf never called him a 'fool of a Took'! He took no nonsense from anyone, did old Gerontius! Bilbo himself stood to attention when he talked of him."

Merry laughed and held out his mug to be filled. "Did you ever think, Pippin, what old Gerontius would have made of the world outside the Shire? The Ents, for instance – don't you think he and Treebeard would have got along?"

"Oh aye, two of the same sort, they would have been! The Old Took would've just stood there, his head about up to Treebeard's knee, and told him what he thought of his wild old forest! And then he'd have sent out hobbits to every thinly populated bit of the Shire, trying if he could find the Entwives for him. From what Bilbo said of him, he had a kind enough heart, if you once got on his good side."

"Would he really have been just up to Treebeard's knee?" Fosco asked in wonder. "How big is an Ent, anyway?"

"Big enough to squash you flat, if he stepped on you, my lad," Pippin told him solemnly, but his eyes twinkled. "Aye, but they were fine allies to have in battle, the Ents were. They had the walls of Isengard down around Saruman's ears before he knew what he was about, and Gimli said the orcs around Helm's Deep fled into that forest the Ents brought up before the walls and none of them was ever seen again. He thought the trees must've eaten them –" He went silent all of a sudden, looking at his plate, his mouth shut in a straight line.

Mr. Merry nodded and laid down his fork as if he wasn't hungry any more. "That's a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone, not even an orc. Come on, Frodo; we seem to have moved from table talk to history. You'd better start writing it down – I don't fancy telling it twice."

I started clearing the table. Seemed like even the Captains had memories they found hard to deal with, and I thought of Sam. When he was awake, he was the cheerful, practical hobbit I had loved all my life – other than he was wiser, braver, than he had been, you'd never have known he'd traveled to far places, or lived through awful danger. But he had nightmares, sometimes, when he'd wake up in a cold sweat, flailing his arms and muttering. I soothed him then, and he'd go back to sleep with his arms tight around me, his head up against my heart as if it eased him to hear it beating.

September was moving along, and it was apple harvest. As little and agile as Fosco was, he could climb to the highest branches and bring down the fruit in a sack he wore over his shoulders. This year there'd be no need to shake the trees and bruise those topmost apples.

Marigold came the day I made apple butter. I'd borrowed my Mum's big copper kettle, and we set it over a fire out back of the chicken coop. It was a cool, bright day, warm enough to be comfortable with just a sweater, cool enough that standing by the fire stirring the thick brown stuff was a delight. It smelled spicy and sweet, and brought back happy memories of the farm, cooking the apples with Mum, and my brothers coming around to beg for tastes on a wooden spoon.

"I've got a secret," I told Mari.

"Bet I can guess," she said with a grin. "You want blue or pink for your baby blanket?"

"Marigold Gamgee! Did Mum tell you?"

"No – you've just got a look in your eye, Rosie. You look like the cat's been in the cream."

I giggled. "I guess that's how I feel, too. When I'm not feeling too sick to move – my word, Mari, they call it morning sick, but I feel sick all day long! Mum gave me some ginger – that helps a bit."

"What does Sam say about it?"

"I haven't told him yet – Mum said not."

"He'll make a good father – just look how he is with that lad you got staying here. I never thought I'd see day my brother took up with any of Ted Sandyman's kin! How long is he staying, that Fosco?"

"Till Bloomie finds someplace else for him, away from Ted."

"He'll be here a good long time, then. Nobody but Mr. Frodo would have no brother of Ted's living with them."

There was a high, caroling laugh from over in the orchard, and I looked to see Fos almost at the top of one of the trees hard by the fence, waving madly at us.

"Hi, Mistress Rose!" he yelled. "Can I have a taste?"

"Hey, you, Fosco!" I heard Sam's deep voice. "Watch what you're about, I don't want to be scraping you up off the grass!"

"On your bread at teatime," I called to him, and he disappeared down amid the branches. "I don't think we mind how long he stays," I told Marigold.

What she said got me thinking, though. It was too bad, how folk blamed Fosco and Bloomie for Ted's crimes, and then Ted bullied them on top of it. I didn't know how Bloomie was managing, but Fos had settled in at Bag End like he'd always belonged there. His room held a collection of bright colored feathers he'd picked up in the woods – Sam had sent him there several times, scavenging for kindling for the fireplaces. There was a row of horse chestnuts, too, that he was drilling for conkers, and a big artist's fungus he was planning to draw a picture on, soon's he decided what the picture was to be of.

I was still helping him with his reading after breakfast, and it made me eager for Sam to teach me more, so I could stay ahead of Fos. Mr. Frodo came back out to the kitchen for something one morning and found us working together.

"Now there's a sight to gladden a schoolmaster's heart," he said, coming to look over our shoulders. "You'll be way ahead of everyone else, when we start school again, Fosco." He looked critically at the words I had written for Fos to copy. "You're developing a nice hand, Rose. How's your reading coming along?"

I smiled up at him, glad to have won his praise. "I can read the bits of verse Sam writes for me. I haven't tried reading anything else."

"I'll have to dig out some books for you, then. The ones Sam started on, when he was learning, must be around someplace."

True to his word, after dinner he called Sam into the study. This once he had managed to get an evening at home, sending the Captains off to the Dragon without him, and in a little while he and Sam came down the passage carrying a tall bookcase between them.

"Set it between the windows, Sam," he gasped. "You've been doing such a good job teaching your wife to read, it's time we gave her something to practice on. Something for you to read, too, when winter comes and you have a minute to sit down! Come on back now and help me pick out the books for the kitchen library."

Before long they called Fosco and me in, and it was, "Here, Rosie, can you read this?" and, "Look, Fos, a book on the birds of the Shire – which ones do you have feathers from, do you think?" By the time Merry and Pippin got home, we'd turned the study into a shambles of books and maps and rolled parchments, digging into the far reaches of bookcases and dusty cupboards.

"Good night, he's moving house again! Are you coming out to join us at Crickhollow, cousin, bag and Baggins?" Pippin exclaimed.

"Baggins and books, I'd say," Merry corrected him. "What on earth are you up to, Frodo?"

I don't know yet what got into Mr. Frodo that night – the study was a mess, we were all smudged with dust and sweat from shoving piles of books around, and we'd been teasing and joking together, having such a good time. I look back now and I wonder, sometimes – if we could've kept Fosco with us, or if Frodo had spent more time with Merry and Pippin –

"What are you doing, Frodo?" Mr. Merry asked.

"Tearing the place apart looking for something I lost," Frodo said, leaning into a big empty cupboard. "Bilbo had this ring –"

The Captains stared at him, mouths open as if they feared for his sanity, and he sat back on his heels and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Merry – Pippin – oh, Elbereth, if you could see your faces –!"

Chapter 21: Anticipation

in which Sam is more noticing than she thought

Mr. Frodo's birthday was the twenty-second, and the Autumn Fair would be the following week in Waymoot. The Captains wouldn't be with us for the Fair; the Master of Brandy Hall wanted his son in Buckland for the annual Pony Meet, and Mr. Pippin was going with him.

"You ought to come with us, Frodo," Merry told him. "You haven't been to the Hall since I dragged you out of your lair in June, and you didn't spend the night that time! The parents think you've sworn off all allegiance to your Brandybuck kin."

"They know me better than that! I'll come for Yule, Merry – I've got the school to think of, as soon as the Fair is behind us. Before those youngsters have time to forget whatever they still remember from the summer."

"Oh aye, Cousin Frodo is a busy hobbit, Merry, not a useless gadabout like you and me!" Pippin said carelessly. I held the platter for him to take another portion of stuffed mushrooms. They were at dinner and we were serving them, which pleased Sam no end. He topped up Mr. Frodo's wine glass and moved to do the same for Mr. Merry.

"Speak for yourself, Pippin – or rather, don't!" Merry was emphatic and he sounded annoyed. "You picked that up from your father last time you were home, and you'd do better to forget it. When has the Thain ever given you a task of any responsibility to show your usefulness, as you put it? My father definitely wants our help at the Pony Meet, and that means you as well as me. You have an eye for a good beast, and a fine hand at training a raw colt – the Master knows that well enough, if the Thain doesn't!"

I slipped away to the kitchen. Fosco was arranging the cheese tray, and I reflected that he'd turned out to be a useful lad, if ever there was one. And so was Mr. Pippin, all the more for his lighthearted chatter – I could see the difference in Mr. Frodo since the cousins had been at Bag End. I wished I could bottle Mr. Pippin and keep him around for dark days.

Sam came in with a load of their plates, and I carried the cheese tray into the dining room.

"I'm hoping to get the Buckland school going after Yule, Frodo," Merry was saying. "My father agreed to it, so long as all he has to do is provide a place and the materials. It's up to me to find a teacher and line up pupils, and I've no experience with that sort of thing. I'm counting on your help, so you'd better plan on staying a few weeks."

"Do you need more slate pencils, Frodo? Or anything?" Pippin asked.

Frodo grinned down the table at him. "That depends, cousin. Does the schoolmaster at the Smials know he's making donations to Hobbiton School?"

"Oh aye, what did you think, Frodo – I just walked off with two dozen pencils and a bottle of ink? The copybooks, now, they were right in the school cupboard; I walked off with them. The pencils and ink he keeps in a locked drawer; those I had to ask for! He was very obliging about it, though, especially when I got him the use of a pony cart to go courting in. Has its advantages, being a knight of Gondor. The stableboys can't do enough for me – I give them fencing lessons when I'm home."

Merry leaned back in his chair, helpless with laughter. "If Aragorn could hear you now! How are the mighty fallen – a knight of Gondor giving fencing lessons, to get the use of a pony cart, in exchange for school supplies! For that matter, if the bard who sang at the Field of Cormallen could see Frodo of the Nine Fingers playing schoolmaster to a gaggle of dirty-faced hobbit lads —!"

Frodo cut himself a slice of cheese from the arrangement on the tray. "Not at all, Merry – I make them wash their faces before we begin. Do I smell apple crisp, Rosie, or am I just having pleasant dreams?"

I took the hint and whisked off to the kitchen for their dessert. I so enjoyed listening to their banter, it was hard to keep my mind on serving. Sam would've been vexed had he noticed, but Mr. Frodo only winked at me.

The day of his birthday, I was on my feet all day. The Captains would be leaving in two more mornings, so this was farewell banquet as well as birthday, and I wanted it to be special. Stuffed duck with onion sauce, plum and apple jelly, baked potatoes in their jackets – I'd made a red velvet cake the day before, but I'd wait till just before dessert to put currant jam between the layers and pipe drifts of sweet whipped cream over the top.

They were having a light tea in the study this day, saving room for the feast. I was waiting for the kettle to boil and wrapping mushrooms in bacon to grill over the fire, for them to have with wine before dinner. Sam came in from the orchard to wash up. He took one look at me, then came and swept me up in his arms and plopped me into one of the rockers by the fireplace.

"Sit down, Rosie lass, you look run off your feet! Don't you know better than to wear yourself out, in your condition?"

I stared at him in shock, and he ran gentle fingers over my hair. "Just when were you planning to tell me, lass?"

I shook my head, unbelieving. "How did you know, Sam? I would've told you soon; Mum told me to wait awhile, to be sure. But how –?"

"I haven't been a gardener all my life and not know raspberry leaf tea when I smell it, or not know what it's for, Rosie. I wondered why you were sick so much, but when I saw you drinking that tea, I knew. I've just been sitting quiet, waiting for you to get around to telling me."

I was half afraid to look at him, in case he was angry, or hurt. But when I finally looked up, he was grinning, and I flung my arms around his neck.

"Oh Sam – wait till I tell Mum! She said menfolks never notice nothing – she ought to know better, when it comes to you!"

He laughed. "I notice when it's you, lass, so best not try to put nothing over on me! So now I'm allowed to know, when do we expect little Frodo-lad?"

"In the spring, March probably. I hope it is a lad, Sam."

He hugged me very lightly, like I was made of fine china. "I hope so too, but either way, lad or lass, we'll make'un welcome. Now, do we tell Mr. Frodo, or are you still wanting to keep it secret?"

"I guess it wouldn't stay a secret much longer – I've already had to let out my waistbands."

"Do you mind if I tell them all three, when I carry in the tea tray?"

"Sam! I'm perfectly capable of carrying in the tray!"

I tried to get up, but he pinned me in the chair. "Capable of putting your feet up, too, for the first time today, I don't doubt. I'll be carrying the trays for some months to come, Mistress Rose, while you take care of my wife and our baby! Sit still now, and I'll get you a mug before I take theirs in to them."

I sat drinking my tea, and it did feel good to rest. Sam had slid a stool under my feet, and I relaxed into the quiet. Pretty soon I'd have to get up and see about dinner – there was pudding to make, to go with the beef roast – Sam would see to that, on the spit over the fire – no one did a roast like Sam –

I guess I was starting to fall asleep, when a racket of noise burst into the kitchen.

"Oh aye, here's the little mother," Mr. Pippin cried, and I jumped up to find them all around me, Sam already looking the proud papa, and Mr. Frodo's face shining like someone had lit a candle inside.

"Congratulations, Rosie!" he said, and the gladness in his voice was like bells ringing. "It's been many a year since Bag End was home to a baby, and the old place must be as happy about this as I am myself."

"A toast, Frodo! Break out the wine – is there any of the Old Winyards left?" Mr. Pippin was rummaging in the cupboard for glasses, but Mr. Merry came over and took my hand.

"A blessing on you both, Rose, you and the babe. You're to tell me, mind, if there's anything you need that I can provide."

"No more Old Winyards, Pippin, we drank the last of it when I sold Bag End. Sam, can you find us something to drink a toast?"

Sam brought up a dusty bottle of something-or-other – whatever it was, it was good – and they drank my health and the baby's, and Sam's, and Frodo's –

They won't be wanting much tea, after this, I thought. Mr. Pippin kept refilling their glasses, but I took just a little sip each time – wine and babies don't mix, Mum had told me that.

At last they each hugged me and patted my belly – for luck, so they said – and Sam and I were alone in the kitchen again.

"Do you think they'll still want cake, and bread and butter?" I asked.

"After all those toasts, they'd better have something solid, or they'll be asleep by dinnertime! I think I should've saved the announcement for dinner, after all."

He looked at me ruefully. "I'd best eat something myself, or I won't stay awake to turn the roast."

He was so funny, and so sweet. I kissed him and laughed. A lucky child, little Frodo-lad, with Sam Gamgee for father!

Chapter 22: Frodo's Birthday

in which are presents

Sam went to the door when Fosco Boffin and Fatty came – Mr. Fosco and Mr. Fredegar, as Sam reminded me at least four times that afternoon.

"You sound just like Da," I told him at last, more than half annoyed. "You nag me about it one more time, Sam, and I'll call him Fatty to his face – which is what he told me to call him, after all, so I doubt he'll take exception!"

"When he was three parts stewed, remember," he said in that quiet voice of his. "You wouldn't do that, Rosie – make it look like Mr. Frodo had some half-trained tween waiting table for his guests, not the prettiest, best lass in the Shire." And left me not knowing whether to kiss him for the compliment, or not speak to him the rest of the day for the part about the "half-trained tween". Before I could decide one way or the other, the doorbell rang and he went to let them in.

The dinner went like clockwork, from the grilled mushrooms in the parlour to whet their appetites, to the birthday cake with its mounds of whipped cream and glasses of sherry at the end. Sam's roast was cooked to perfection, and the pudding rose to heights of glory and collapsed in golden tenderness, exactly as it should.

"No more sherry for me, thank you, Mari – er, Sam," Fatty said, covering his glass with one broad hand. "I believe I've had enough." He winked at me, and I grinned. Sam's mouth was twitching and his shoulders shaking as he tried to hold in his laughter, and just then Pippin caught sight of him.

"What's the matter, Sam? You look as if you're about to have a fit – does he have fits, Rose? He never did in all our journey – must be married life brings them on!"

Sam turned away to hide his face, but the laugh burst out of him anyway, and that set Fatty and me off as well. Fatty leaned back in his chair, the very image of well-fed good humour, and laughed aloud, and Sam set down the decanter and kept his face turned toward the wall, trying to regain a straight face. I hung on his arm, giggling helplessly, and the others looked at the three of us with such expressions of bafflement that it started us off all over again.

"I'd say it must've been the mushrooms, Frodo, only it doesn't seem to have affected the rest of us," Merry observed conversationally. "It can't be marriage, Pippin – Fatty is still single, you know."

"I don't think it's the mushrooms, and if it's marriage, I have to say Sam's shown no signs of it until now." said Mr. Frodo. "I think they have some private joke, and it's time they let us in on it. Sam?"

Sam shook his head. "S'not my story," he said, still struggling with laughter. "You'll have to get Mr. Fredegar to tell you, if he's willing. Wouldn't be fitting for no one else."

Frodo looked at Fatty under his brows. "All right, Fredegar, time to come clean. You've only been out and about since Mid-summer; I'd hardly think you've had time to get in any scrapes, and you never did get in many, even as a tween. Of course, I wouldn't have named you as the hobbit most likely to lead the Shire in rebellion against the ruffians, either, so it just shows how mistaken we can be in our friends."

Fatty pulled himself together and began telling the story of our visit to him, Mari and me, the mushroom pie and the ale, and the sherry – and the secrets we had wormed out of him. By the end of the tale, the others were laughing as heartily as we had been. Sam poured a last round of wine, and they toasted Mr. Frodo and Mr. Bilbo, away in Rivendell, before they got up from the table and headed into the parlour for the present-giving.

"Can you just put everything to soak now, Rose, and come join us? Otherwise we'll wait until you've finished washing up." Frodo met Sam's look. "Dinner's over, Sam, and you served us beautifully, you and Rose. Now it's presents, and I want all my friends to keep my birthday with me."

"All right, Mr. Frodo. Just leave everything, Rosie; I'll help you with it later."

Frodo poked his head in the kitchen door as he passed. "Come along, Fosco lad, I've got a present for you as well. You'd better come join us." He held out his hand and Fos ran to him, and they led the rest of us into the parlour.

"Youngest first," he said, when the fire was blown up bright on the hearth and we were all settled round it. Fosco was sitting on the floor by his feet, and Frodo handed him a small wooden box of some beautiful wood, highly polished. Fos opened it carefully and took out a small golden ring with an opaque black stone, an ornate letter F deeply carved into it. He looked up at Mr. Frodo with eyes of wonder – I'm sure he'd never in his life thought of owning such a thing.

"It was mine when I was a lad – a signet ring for you, Fosco, to seal your letters, now that you know how to write." He smiled a little. "I almost hesitate to give a ring, on my birthday, but I promise there's no magic attached to this one! Try it on, Fos, see if it fits."

It did, and it warmed my heart to see Fosco turning his hand this way and that to admire it on his hand. It might have looked better on the young Frodo's scholarly hand – Fosco's were stubby-fingered and chapped from outdoor work – but the lad's delight in the beautiful thing was a joy to see. I thought, not for the first time, what a difference the master had made in this child's life.

I came out of my thoughts to find that Pippin had received a black velvet waistcoat with the White Tree of Gondor embroidered in silver thread on the pocket, very neat and elegant. There was a like one in deep forest green for Merry, with an embroidered golden horse.

"So you can wear the emblems of your knighthood, even in ordinary hobbit attire," Mr. Frodo said, and you could hear in his voice how proud he was of his cousins.

Folco received a graceful pipe of Elven make, bound with silver, and a soft leather pouch of the best Longbottom Leaf. He lit up immediately and sat smoking with a smile of perfect contentment.

"I had a time thinking what to give you, Fatty," Frodo said seriously. "There's not much you need, unless it's another fast pony for your stables, and that's a bit above my touch! But I think this will show you what I think of your activities during the Troubles, though I hope you'll never have occasion to use it."

Fatty gave him a questioning look and accepted a bulky package wrapped in soft cloth. He opened it to reveal a scabbard and belt of worked leather, the scabbard decorated with Elven letters that shone like silver. Fatty traced them with his finger, saying,

"You'll have to translate for me, Frodo. I'm afraid I don't read Elvish."

"It says 'Defender'. A proper title for the one who led the fight for freedom, when he could have sat home in safety." He bit his lip and continued in a low voice, "I was so terribly ashamed to find my own cousin had caused so much suffering and ruin to the Shire. I hardly felt I could hold up my head, and then I heard another cousin – you, Fatty – had been leading the resistance, and that was some consolation. Thank you, Fredegar."

"Only doing what you would have done yourself, Frodo. What you were doing, at the ends of the earth! Don't think about Lotho – there's a few bad apples in every family."

"Even among the Elves," Sam said somberly. "No need to be ashamed of your kin, Mr. Frodo. Your family's been the salvation of the Shire, taken all in all."

Frodo reddened, but he looked pleased. "Enough, Sam! At least maybe enough of us worked for the good of the Shire, to outweigh Lotho's mischief. And I couldn't have done my part without a certain Gamgee. This is for you."

Sam's gift was wrapped in fabric as Fatty's had been, and I wondered for a moment what had become of the carved wooden bird from the Fair. Maybe Mr. Frodo hadn't been able to buy it after all. But when Sam opened his gift, the little bird was there, perched on the edge of her nest, and he broke into a wide smile.

"There now, I know who put you up to this, Mr. Frodo! Rosie and me looked at it together, me just wishing I could carve such a thing! I'll set it on my chest of drawers to see first thing every morning – it's good luck, too, to have a nesting bird in the house, did you know that?"

Frodo laughed. "I've already got more luck that any hobbit needs or deserves, with friends like all of you here. Now, Rosie."

"Wait, Mr. Frodo – I don't think Sam saw the rest of his present." I reached into the rumpled fabric that had held the wooden bird, and shook out the extra padding that had protected it. "Look, Sam!" It was a vest, the same style as Sam always wore on holidays, but made of fine, soft suede. It had a little watch pocket, and embroidered on it was a tiny silver tree with golden blossoms – a mallorn.

"Now Mr. Frodo, that's too much, you know, two presents!" Sam began, but Frodo cut him off.

"No, the bird is your present, Sam. This is just a return, you might say – thanks for the loan of your cloak in Mordor." He held up his hand as Sam started to protest again. "I wouldn't be here celebrating this birthday, if not for you, Sam Gamgee. I can't repay you, but let me at least say thank you!"

He stretched out his hand to Sam, and Sam gripped it tight for a moment. "Now, Rosie!" Mr. Frodo said, turning to me.

My gift was the book with the golden dragon on the cover, that I had seen him buying at Overlithe Fair. I hadn't really looked at it then – well, it was none of my business, after all – but now I looked close at it, I marveled. The cover was real leather, and when I opened it up I found that among the pages of print were at least a dozen pictures in full, glowing color. A dragon, like the one on the cover, and a knight in armor confronting it with a sword. A man leading a blindfolded woman through what looked like an underground cavern. A city of many buildings about to be engulfed by a monstrous wave. I looked again at the cover. "Hero Tales for Young Folk," was printed in gold letters under the dragon.

"Can you read it, Rosie? Try the first page," Frodo said.

I turned to the first story. "There was an island that stood high above the Sea, and its king was a Man both good and wise. And the king had a son, noble and proud of face, who loved the Sea.' I can, Mr. Frodo! I can read this!"

"Good for you, Rosie! Here, let me see." Sam leaned over my shoulder, turning pages and looking at the pictures.

"Sam has a book of Elven tales, so I got you stories of Men, Rose. You can read them now, and someday you can share them with your children."

"I will, Mr. Frodo. But aren't there any books about hobbits?"

He laughed. "I think we will have to write those ourselves, Rose. And they'll be tales of home and field, for the most part, not of war and high adventure. Something we can all be grateful for – the perilous deeds are good to read about, before a warm fire on a stormy night, but no pleasure to live through."

Chapter 23: October Storm

in which the year darkens

The Autumn Fair in Waymeet was the last big gathering of the year. After that everyone would be busy digging in for the winter, bringing in firewood and piling straw for insulation against the foundations of any houses that were built above ground. There were the late root crops to get in, and cider making, and butchering to be done on the farms, once the weather got cold. Hobbits mostly stayed near home after the Fair.

Mr. Frodo had brightened up so much while Merry and Pippin were visiting, Sam hoped he would come along with us to the Fair. He wouldn't, though. As soon as the Captains left, Frodo went back to his book, hammer and tongs. I had all I could do to get him to the table to eat, even though we served every meal by the kitchen fire the way he liked it.

"I've got both their stories to go through," he said, "and that's a lot of material. They weren't even together the whole time, you know. It's complicated to sort out, and I couldn't write everything down while they were telling me. I have to get it down now, at least in rough form, before I forget something. I can't ask them to go through that again – I could see what a strain it was for them, bringing back those memories. My poor cousins, what I put them through!"

"And what is he putting himself through, Rosie?" Sam said later. "It's not enough he keeps stirring around in his own nightmares, now he has to adopt everyone else's as well! I'll be mighty glad to see this book finished, and that's the truth!"

Of course, we thought when the book was finished, Frodo would settle down to a normal, peaceful life. Run the school, probably, and visit back and forth with his cousins. Be a bachelor uncle to our coming little one. As soon as he finished the book, got it out of his system so to speak, he could forget the past and be happy.

So we packed up the wagon for the Fair – apple butter and pickles – sweet and sour – to sell, and dried lavender and statice for winter bouquets, and the best of the apples and the milk-fed pumpkins for show.

The pumpkins were spectacular, smooth-skinned monsters that took Sam and Frodo and my brother Jolly, all three, to wrestle into the cart. Jolly had driven the farm cart over for us to take to the Fair, with some of my Mum's fancywork to exhibit and knitted gloves to sell. Mum had a young mother expecting in the village – she was midwifeing now, and she wouldn't go so far from home when one of "her" lasses might be needing her.

Sam fretted at leaving Mr. Frodo alone for three days, but Fosco had the answer to that.

"I'm stayin' with him," he said, looking obstinate as a little donkey with his feet spread apart and arms folded over his chest. "You cook up some chicken and beef as we can eat cold, Mistress Rose, and I c'n make pancakes and baked apples and toasted cheese – my Mum taught me that much! I'll see he eats while you're gone. I'll make sure he gets out in the garden for a pipe, too, and I'm going to teach him to play conkers. I made one for him."

Sam laughed, but to my surprise, he seemed content to trust Fosco. "Teach Mr. Frodo to play conkers – I'm tempted to stay home myself, Rosie, and watch that! Teach my grandmother to suck eggs! Young Master Fos is in for a surprise, I think – Mr. Frodo broke my conkers regular, when I was a lad. He had a knack for swinging his just sharp enough –!"

"Do you think he'll be all right, Sam, with just Fosco to look out for him?"

Sam wrapped his arms round me, gentle like – no more swinging me around in circles, these days! "Ah, Rosie, you're getting as bad as I am, you know! He's a grown hobbit, and he's come through worse things than a few days alone in his own home. Why don't you ask me if Fos will be all right, with no one but Mr. Frodo? But aye, they'll both be fine, I'd say, looking after each other."

We set off right after breakfast, leaving the dishes for Fos, at his insistence. He was taking his role of caretaker to Bag End and its master very seriously. Mr. Frodo saw us off, waving from the top of the front steps with an arm around Fos.

"Don't you sell off all those pumpkins, Sam, however much you're offered for them! Save one for Rose to make pumpkin preserves!"

And it was good he said that, too, for Sam was offered a pretty penny for them. No one had seen true milk-fed pumpkins before, and they were the wonder of the Fair. We sold off everything we brought, save one pumpkin for Mr. Frodo's preserves, and Sam took a blue ribbon and a red one, and Mum took first place for embroidery. We slept at the inn, for Sam wouldn't have me sleeping in the wagon in my condition, he said. Half the Shire was there – the other half was at the Pony Meet in Buckland, I suppose – and it was a fine send-off to the finest summer you could imagine. We rattled off home on the third morning with the wagon near empty, having bought nothing but a barrel of ale and some carded wool for me to spin on long winter evenings.

The first of October dawned bright and warm, a perfect day for school to start again. Fosco, from his lofty position as the only lad who actually lived at Bag End, welcomed the others like old friends come to call. From the first morning it was clear that he was now far ahead of any of them in lessons. It might have caused problems, but Mr. Frodo turned it into something he could share.

"Balco and the other lads have been teaching you to defend yourself, Fos – now you can help them with their reading. You all have something to teach and something to learn."

So during the morning, while Frodo worked with each boy in turn, Fosco helped the others to prepare their lessons, and during break, Balco started teaching him to flip an attacker over on his back. Fosco did his school lessons before the kitchen fire in the evenings, just him and Mr. Frodo, while Sam helped me with the washing up.

By the end of the week, Fos could flip any of the lads except Balco himself, and we were called out to watch a demonstration. He did his master proud, and Balco grinned with satisfaction.

"Bet you could hold your own against Ted now, Fos," he said. "Why, I bet you could even put Mr. Frodo on his back!"

Sam guffawed. "He'd best not try it, howsomever! Suppose you take me on, Balco."

Balco eyed him up and down. He was near Sam's own height, and his work at his Da's forge had made him muscular beyond his years.

"All right, Master Samwise, I'll have a go. No hard feelings, if I get you down?"

"No, lad, what do you take me for? Fair fight, mind!"

Balco moved in cautiously, and Sam just stood there relaxed, his arms hanging at his sides. I couldn't rightly see what happened next, but Balco tried to do the flip he had taught Fos, and then he was lying on the grass looking surprised.

"How'd you do that?" he exclaimed, jumping up, and the rest of their break time was given to Sam teaching Balco the new throw, till Mr. Frodo called the lads in.

October sixth was market day and no school. The weather had turned rainy during the night, and there was a chill in the air that penetrated right through my cloak when I went out to feed the chickens. A poor day for the market, and I was glad we had all we needed and could stay home.

Mr. Frodo didn't come to breakfast, and Sam said leave him be. "It's a good day to sleep in – I could almost go back to bed myself." He didn't, of course. He and Fosco went out to the woodshed to split firewood, and I settled down to sew baby clothes.

The rain slacked off by mid-morning, and Sam put his head in to say they were going down to check on the Gaffer, make sure he had enough wood split and what-all, with the weather turning cold.

"Mr. Frodo still not up?" he asked. "I'd best wake him, or he'll never sleep tonight." He went on down the passage, and a few minutes later he came through the kitchen again.

"Put the kettle on, Rosie; he'll be in for his tea soon's he's dressed. We'll be back after supper – I want to see the Gaffer settled in for a spell, while I've got a day free from the garden."

I put the kettle on and started making a late breakfast, but Mr. Frodo didn't come. The water boiled and I set it back, waiting for him, and still he didn't come. At last I got worried and went to knock on his door. There was a long pause before I heard a hoarse, "Come in."

He was sitting by the cold fireplace huddled in the quilt from his bed. He was shivering and seemed only half awake.

"Mr. Frodo, what's wrong? Why don't you come in the kitchen where it's warm? Do you want me to get a fire going in here for you, sir?"

It was like he had to come back from someplace a long ways off, before he answered me. "No, that's all right. I'll just get dressed and come to the kitchen. I'm awake now."

He didn't sound awake; he sounded like he was lost in a fog. I waited another moment and he didn't move.

"Mr. Frodo, come on out in the kitchen where it's warm. You can get dressed after you've warmed up a bit." I pulled at his arm and he got up slowly and let me lead him out of the room. He kept that quilt wrapped around him as he walked, and I settled him in a rocker close by the fire, quilt and all, and got a mug of hot, sweet tea into his hands as quick as I could. He drank it slowly, and when he finished I filled his mug again. Finally he stopped shivering and seemed to come awake.

"I'm sorry, Rose; I don't know what's the matter with me today. What time is it, anyway?"

"It's near eleven, Mr. Frodo. It's so dark and gloomy, it's a good day for sleeping in."

I'd made fry toast for him, soaked in egg and cooked in butter and honey, and he ate it without speaking. He was still wrapped in the quilt like he was freezing to death, even sitting right by the fire, and I made him take another mug of tea.

"Are you all right, Mr. Frodo? You look like you're coming down with something."

"Just cold, Rosie. I'll be all right now I've eaten. Will you light a fire in the study for me, while I dress?"

I made the biggest fire I could in the study, and pulled all the curtains closed to keep out the draught. When he sat down to work, I brought in a footwarmer for him, and a lap robe.

He still had a kind of foggy look in his eyes, but he smiled and patted my hand.

"Thank you, Rose. I don't think the Thain himself is looked after as well as I am."

"Well, that's just as it should be, then, Mr. Frodo. You've done more for the Shire than the Thain ever did!" I thought that would make him laugh, but he just shook his head and kneaded his shoulder like it was hurting him.

"That's all I need now, Rose. I'll let you get back to what you were doing." He picked up his pen and leaned over his notes as I slipped out of the room.

He worked all day without stopping. I carried his lunch in for him, and he ate it without ever leaving his desk. When I brought the tea tray in, he was pacing around the room smoking his pipe and didn't seem to notice I was there. He didn't eat anything at teatime, though he drank every drop in the teapot. At suppertime I had to nearly drag him away from his desk, pleading my own loneliness eating by myself to get him into the kitchen. And then he didn't do much more than pick at his food, and he didn't speak unless I asked him a question.

I was that glad to see Sam when he got home! Mr. Frodo had been moody, sometimes, and wrapped up in his book, but never like this.

"You'd better go spend some time with him, Sam. I'm worried he's sickening for something."

Sam went down the passage double quick, and came back a little later looking as puzzled and disturbed as I felt.

"I don't know, Rosie. He says it's his old wound hurting him, and he don't seem quite right, somehow. He's going off to bed now, and we'd better do the same."

And after all that, in the morning Mr. Frodo was himself again, though he didn't have much appetite for a couple of days. The lads came back to school, he worked with Fos in the evening and played chess with Sam, and he had Sam reading to us from my book of Hero Tales. It was almost the same as it'd been before, except –

When they first came back from the Quest, while Frodo was staying at the farm, he had nightmares a couple of times a week. Usually he woke himself up after a shout or two, and in the morning he'd be embarrassed and apologetic, but once in awhile Da would have to go in and wake him.

The nightmares had nearly stopped since Sam and I came to live at Bag End; I don't think he'd had more than two or three the entire summer. But after that queer spell of his in October, they returned. At least once a week, seemed like, he woke us all up with his shouting, and Sam would have to go and wake him up. He'd come to breakfast the next morning and apologize.

After a couple of times, I stopped him before he got the words out of his mouth.

"Never mind, Mr. Frodo – if I'd been through the things you have, I'd have nightmares every night of the week and two on Sunday! Come have your breakfast, and don't think no more about it."

Chapter 24: Fosco’s Question

in which Fosco gives his heart

Sunshine seemed to have deserted the Shire. The days were overcast, when it wasn't actually pouring rain, and there was a dank chill in the air that felt like it got right in your bones. Fosco was kept busy splitting wood, keeping the fires going. There was little work could be done outdoors in such weather, and Sam took over some of the cooking for me.

"Sit down and put your feet up, Rosie, like your Mum told you. You can read to me, if you've a mind, from that book Mr. Frodo gave you."

School was still in session, and since it was too wet most days for the lads to take their break outside, Frodo started teaching them chess. At first he had them watch while he and Sam played, to learn how the pieces moved. After a couple days of this, him and Balco teamed up against Sam and the rest of the school, but Sam thought that was a poor arrangement.

"You'd do better by yourself, Mr. Frodo! Balco's got no more notion of strategy than Tom Cotton's prize bull – his one idea is charge straight in till you flatten your opponent by sheer weight! Don't work in chess, that plan."

Frodo laughed. "Exactly, Sam! Balco handicaps our side enough to make the game interesting – I'm sorry, but you're not going to beat me just yet, especially not with the whole school 'helping' you! I hope this rain keeps up – next week I want to put you and Fosco together against the rest of us. I think Fos will make a chess player."

"If you say so, Mr. Frodo." Sam was banking the kitchen fire for the night. "Rain won't hold all month, though, and a good thing; I've got firewood to cut before it gets cold. I'll need to get out there, soon's the weather clears."

"Well, some of these winter nights I'd like to set you and Fos to play each other – that will sharpen both your games. Someday you can teach your children, both of you."

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Frodo, I'll teach them to garden. You can teach them chess."

Frodo didn't answer, but walked over to the window and stood staring out into the dark, and a few minutes later we said goodnight and all went off to bed. He had another nightmare that night, and Sam had to go in and wake him.

Fosco was still getting his lessons in the evening after supper, and then Mr. Frodo started reading us parts of his book that he had finished. He said he wanted Sam to listen, in case he had made any mistakes, but I had an idea it was for Fosco's benefit as well. I noticed what he read to us many times had something to do with friendship and loyalty – his cousins' determination to go with him into exile, for example, or Gimli and Legolas learning to put aside their enmity and be friends.

Fosco had attached himself firmly to Mr. Frodo. When the rain stopped for awhile and Frodo went outside for a smoke, Fos would pace beside him, trying to walk just like him. In the evenings he sat close at his side to do lessons, and afterward he curled up on the floor by his feet, leaning against his knee, to listen the reading. Sam smiled to see it.

"Minds me of myself when I was a lad," he told me. "I'm thinking he's another one who would've followed the master into Mordor."

One evening we were all four sitting there, watching the fire die down after Frodo closed his book. He'd been reading about Gandalf's visit to Saruman, how he'd been tricked and captured by the other wizard, and finally rescued by the great Eagle. I guess we were all tired enough for sleep, but none of us was willing quite yet to leave the cosy room and the comfort of being together.

"Mr. Frodo? I have a question." Fosco's voice seemed loud in the quiet, and Frodo looked down at him without answering.

"I was here, the day you came home, Mr. Frodo. When that Sharkey was here – that was Saruman, wasn't it, that you were just reading about? I was here, right out by the lilacs. And I saw Sharkey try to stab you, and then Master Samwise knocked him down. He would've killed him, he had his sword out – and you made him stop! Why did you? He just tried to kill you! And it was him captured Gandalf and made them cut down all the trees and everything – he was bad, Mr. Frodo! Didn't he deserve to die?"

Frodo was staring at him, and then he pulled the child up on his lap, in the circle of his arm. It seemed like a long time before he answered.

"You know, Fos, I asked Gandalf that same question one time, about someone I thought deserved to die."

"What did he say?"

"He said I shouldn't be in a hurry to pass out death and judgment. He said, some deserve death and get life – and some deserve life and get death. And I can't give them life, so…"

"So you shouldn't kill anyone, not ever?"

Frodo's face was shadowy in the firelight. He shrugged. "I have killed, you know. Orcs, in battle. Sharkey didn't hurt me, Fosco; I was wearing a mail shirt. But the one I thought deserved to die – well, he died, but I didn't kill him. And he died saving me."

"He saved your life?" The child's voice was hushed with wonder.

"My life, yes, that too. He saved my soul, Fosco."

"I don't understand."

There was silence. Frodo sat with bowed head and I felt a stab of worry for him, but when he answered his voice was strong and certain.

"I wouldn't let Master Samwise kill Sharkey, because Sharkey wasn't always evil. Once he was good, and great – that's what he was meant to be. And then he lost himself, as I nearly lost myself. I found myself again, and I wanted him to have that chance. Now do you understand?"

"I think…"

Chapter 25: Going to Buckland

in which Bloomie finds safe harbour

By the time school shut down, the week before Yule, I was glad to see it end. I was getting big with child, and it was tiring to be cooking for so many. If it was just me and Sam and Mr. Frodo, I could've got by with a hearty soup and some fresh bread at midday, and fruit and cheese at elevenses, the days I was specially tired – but we had promised proper meals for the lads that came to school. Sam helped all he could, but he was busy outside getting in the winter's wood supply, and I hated anyway for him to have to do my work for me.

Mr. Frodo was looking worn too. He kept bright and energetic while the lads were there, but once they left after dinner, he dragged. Sometimes when I called him for tea in the afternoon, I'd find him asleep in a chair before the study fire. I went back and forth whether I should wake him up to eat – plainly he needed the rest, but he was too thin by far; he hadn't never filled out good when he came back from his travels. Sometimes I woke him and sometimes I left him to sleep, but either way, the days he fell asleep like that, he went back to his study in the evening and worked far into the night on his book, and the next day he was more tired than ever.

The last day of school, Sam and I were called in again. Each lad read a few sentences aloud that he'd written on his slate. Then the slates were wiped clean, and Mr. Frodo read a short poem to them, slowly, and they wrote it down as he spoke. I watched and listened, holding tight to Sam's hand.

This was what we had been working so hard for, all of us. This was Mr. Frodo's dream – the lads could read and write! Oh, there was plenty still for them to learn, I knew that, but that was frosting on the cake. We'd come a long, long way since Overlithe Fair and Frodo's decision to start the school. At last the slates were put away and Frodo called Fosco up front.

"Today Fosco will tell the story," he said. "Or rather, he will read it to us – a story he wrote himself."

Fos stood before us clutching a handful of papers. "Mr. Frodo told me this story, but I wrote it down myself, and he didn't help me none. So if I remembered some of it wrong, Mr. Frodo, you'll have to tell them the right way, will you?"

Frodo nodded, smiling at him, and he began to read. It was the story of the Travellers' return, from the time they came to the Gate at Buckland and found it barred against them, all through the Battle of Bywater, to Sharkey's death before the door of Bag End.

"But Mr. Frodo wouldn't let Master Samwise kill him, even though he had sided with the Enemy and helped the ruffians to ruin the Shire, because he said even Sharkey was good once and he should have a chance to find his goodness again," he finished.

"But he didn't, though – that Worm-something cut his throat!" Hob Goodbody said.

"Served him right!" Balco said fiercely. "Mr. Frodo, beg your pardon, sir, but creatures like that Sharkey, best thing you can do is kill 'em; they're like a viper or something, you don't want 'em left alive to maybe bite you again!"

"But that's just the point, Balco. He wasn't like a viper, poisonous from the beginning. He was more like a good sword, gone rusty and dull with misuse. The sword could be restored, made good again."

Sam's quiet voice cut through the noise the lads were making, like it was an argument he and Mr. Frodo had had many times before. "A sword don't have no mind of its own to fight you with, if you decide to clean it up and make it serviceable. Saruman, he would've had to want to turn back to what he was before, Mr. Frodo."

"Yes. And he never had the chance to want it." Frodo's eyes were sad, and I realized for the first time that he had been grieved by Sharkey's murder.

"Mr. Frodo?" It was Fosco. "Does everyone have some goodness to find, if they want to? Even – even my brother Ted, you think?"

I glanced at Sam – he'd had plenty of battles with Ted when they were lads, mostly trying to protect youngsters Ted was bullying. He didn't speak, waiting to hear what Frodo would say.

"Why would you think he didn't, Fosco? Yes, I think there's some good in Ted, if he ever takes the trouble to look for it."

"Well, if he does, he better take along a lantern!" Balco said scornfully. "He'll need a bit of light to find anything that small!"

Mr. Frodo looked like he wanted to say something more, but then he just shook his head. "Time for break, lads. How do we team up today?"

"Captain Samwise and Captain Fos!" someone shouted, and Frodo laughed as he got out the chessboard. "So be it! Choose your teams, captains."

I went to get the dinner finished, and they gathered on the floor before the fireplace for their game. As I got the last of the food on the table, there was a shout of "Checkmate!" and Sam 's team broke into cheers. They came to the table and there wasn't much noise after that for awhile.

"When does school start again, Mr. Frodo?" I looked at Balco in surprise – he sounded eager to have the school re-open! He'd certainly been the most reluctant student we had, but seemingly Mr. Frodo had won him over.

"I don't know yet, Balco. I'll be in Buckland most of January, visiting the Hall. We'll see when I get back. Don't forget everything you've learned, now!"

"Not much chance!" Balco grimaced. "Da's already got me writing up his accounts – I'd rather be in school hearing your stories!"

Sam laughed. "There you go, Balco! That was always the best part of school for me too, the stories." He looked across the table at Frodo. "And in the end, reckon it was the stories that brought us through, wouldn't you say? When you're in a tight place, and you start thinking how it would sound in a tale…. I don't know. You find you can do more than you ever thought you could."

So school ended, and I started packing up Mr. Frodo's things to go to Buckland. I was in the kitchen ironing some of his shirts, when Fos came in with a load of firewood. He looked uncommonly sober, and I asked if something was wrong.

"Mistress Rose? Where am I going to spend Yule?"

I stopped ironing in dismay. Nothing had been said about that till now, nothing I had heard. Sam and I would go to the farm, keep Yule with my family, probably visit around to the Gaffer and Sam's married sisters as still lived in Hobbiton. Could we bring Fosco with us? But no, the lad should be with his mother.

"Can you go home, Fosco?"

He was arranging the wood in the rack, putting every stick just so. "Ted will be drunk," he said softly. "From the night before First Yule till three or four days after Second, probably. He'll stay drunk until the homebrew runs out. I threw him once with that trick of Balco's, but— " He swallowed. "He'll have his mates around, too."

"What did you do last year?"

"Mum and me went in her room and bolted the door, pulled her wardrobe in front of it."

Oh, my land! Could we bring him with us, and Bloomie as well? But I could imagine my family's reaction, and Sam's sisters, too – and as for the Gaffer, it didn't bear thinking about! He wouldn't never forgive Ted Sandyman for the goings-on during the Troubles, and he'd see not a speck of difference between Ted and his kin.

I took the problem to Mr. Frodo, interrupting him right in the middle of his book, I was so upset.

"Could they stay here, maybe?" I asked. "At least they'd be out of harm's way, up here at Bag End."

Mr. Frodo laid down his pen. "A lonely Yule, just the two of them alone in this big place."

It would be, right enough. "They won't have much of a holiday if they come with us, though, Mr. Frodo. Not the way folks feel about them."

"No. We got Fosco away from Ted, bringing him here, but that only solved half the problem. It's time we thought about the other half."

He brought it up after supper. "How are things for your mother now, Fosco? She comes up to visit you every week, doesn't she?"

"Aye, Mr. Frodo, every Saturday. I guess things are all right. She told Ted she'd tell you, did he hit her again, and you'd send word to the Captains! So he hasn't hit her since then."

"She must miss you, though."

Fosco nodded, tears coming to his eyes. "I miss her too. I wish she could come and live here too, Mr. Frodo."

Frodo sighed and stretched out his legs. "How are things with the neighbours? Are they getting any more friendly to her?"

"No. They won't have nothing to do with her, or me either, because of Ted."

"Hobbiton has a long memory." He reached out a hand and Fos climbed on his lap, leaning back against Frodo's shoulder. "I almost think the best thing for you and your mother would be to get away from here altogether."

"Go out to Bree?" Fosco sounded horrified, and he pulled away to stare into Frodo's face.

"No, why Bree? Not still planning to murder Ted, are you?" He chuckled. "I was thinking of Buckland, where I grew up. Nobody knows your family there, and the Captains live at Crickhollow. Maybe they could use a housekeeper, and a little lad to chop firewood and keep their swords shined. What do you think?"

"It would be good for Mum," Fosco said slowly. "I don't want to leave Bag End, though, and you and Master Sam and Mistress Rose." He thought some more. "But if I stayed here, it'd be an awful long way to go visit her. Couldn't she just come here, Mr. Frodo?"

Frodo smiled. "I suppose she could, though I'm not sure it would be a good idea, your mother and Mistress Rose trying to share a kitchen! But it wouldn't really solve the problem, Fos. You shouldn't spend the rest of your lives, either one of you, being shunned by the village. That's no way to live."

"No. The lads from school are friendly to me, when it's just us, but the rest of the village – even Balco's Da, and his brother –"

"How about this, Fosco? You talk to your mother, see if you can both come to Buckland with me for Yule. You'll have a pleasant holiday, at any rate, and if you find you like it there, and something can be worked out with the Captains, or at the Hall – well, then you can make a fresh start in a new place. If you don't like it, you'll just come home with me at the end of January, and we'll think again."

And so it happened, when Frodo set off for Buckland he wasn't riding his pony but driving the cart, with Fosco squeezed between him and Bloomie on the seat. But when he came back in January, he came alone.

"They found a place there, then," Sam said when he came in after putting the pony in the stable and seeing him cared for.

Mr. Frodo was settled in his big chair in the parlor, a glass of brandy in his hand, his feet stretched toward the fire. "Oh, yes! Old Fern, in the Hall kitchen, was in bed with rheumatism, and Bloomie went straight in and did her work for her. She's got a light hand with pastry, Bloomie has, and before the month was out the Hall decided they couldn't do without her! She settled in as happy as a bee in clover, and Fosco will be going to the Hall's own school – it's the best chance he could ever have. They have a fine schoolmaster, and Fos has a good mind. He should do very well there."

"And he's with his mother, as he should be." Sam sounded pleased, and he was right, of course. A lad should be with his mother. But I hadn't known how fond I was of that child till he went away, and Sam felt it too.

"It's too quiet around here," he complained one night after Mr. Frodo finished reading to us. "Not that Fosco made a lot of noise, but – I'm glad our own lad is on the way, Rosie!"

Mr. Frodo didn't say nothing, just sat watching the fire, but his face was sad. The rug by his feet looked empty, somehow, without Fos curled up there, leaning against his knee. I saw him rubbing his hand along his knee sometimes, absent-minded like, as if he missed the curly head that used to rest there.

Chapter 26: Rainy Day

in which Sam & Frodo go on a treasure hunt

The weather in February was plain nasty. It was cold, but not quite cold enough for snow – more's the pity, for it rained and rained till you wondered how the sky could hold so much water. I said as much to Frodo one grey afternoon when I carried his tea into the study.

He looked out the window wearily. "Apparently it can't hold it, Rosie, as it's spilling out all over the Shire! Sam should be happy, at any rate; this has to be good for the garden."

I yanked the curtain cord and shut out the miserable scene. "No, even Sam isn't happy, Mr. Frodo. He can't do anything out of doors, and he's tired of reading, he says. Sam, tired of reading! I never thought I'd see the day! He's sitting by the fire whittling on sticks of kindling till you'd think there was a market for wood splinters. I'd wade down to see Marigold, just to get away for awhile, but he won't let me out the door in my 'delicate condition'!"

Frodo chuckled, and I grinned – his laugh was the most 'catching' thing I ever knew, worse than the measles.

"Time for the Master of Bag End to take a hand, would you say? Ask him to step in here, Rosie; I'll keep him occupied."

The next thing I knew, they were tearing the place apart, searching for something. They dug through the big storage closet at the end of passage, pulling out ancient sleds and ice skates, five or six extra dining room chairs, and a broken umbrella. Whatever it was they were after wasn't in there, and they took the time to arrange everything neatly as they put it back.

"Leave those sleds near the front," Mr. Frodo said. "There'll be someone to use them in a few more years."

"Remember when you used to take me out on that big hill the other side of the woods, Mr. Frodo? Back when I was too little to go so far alone, you used to take me. We had some good runs on these here sleds!"

"We did indeed. Well, just be patient a bit longer, Sam, and you'll be taking your children there. Some things never change."

They went down cellar after that, and I heard dull thumps and bangs as they shoved things around down there. Whatever they were looking for must be fairly big, I thought, for they didn't bother with any of the small cupboards and cubbyholes that were tucked away everywhere in Bag End. I was getting curious what it might be, but when I ventured downstairs they sent me right back up.

"It'll be a surprise for you, do we find it," Sam explained, "and if we don't, you won't be disappointed. Go on now, lass, sew another baby shirt or something, and leave us to it!"

At least he sounded cheerful again; they both did, in fact. Just so they found their smiles, this dreary day, I didn't much care what else they did or didn't find. I took his advice and settled down to my sewing, taking a minute to check the chicken simmering over the fire. A good day for spicy creamed chicken, to take the chill out of our bones.

Fosco wouldn't have liked it, I thought. He didn't care for spicy food. I wondered if Fos had found some new friends at the Hall school. I wondered if he ever thought about us. He wouldn't forget Mr. Frodo, that was certain! I wondered if we'd ever see him again.

There was a shout of triumph from the cellar and, a few minutes later, heavy footsteps on the stairs.

"Close your eyes, Rosie!" Sam called, and they thumped into the kitchen, Mr. Frodo panting from exertion.

"Mr. Frodo, sit down and rest – you'll make yourself sick!" I exclaimed, still keeping my eyes shut.

"I'm fine, Rose – keep your eyes closed, now! Get some rags, Sam, and we'll wipe this off a bit before she sees it."

"Rags and linseed oil, I'd say. Can't hardly see the wood for all the dust caked on it – must've been down there a hundred years, Mr. Frodo."

"Rather more than that, actually. It was Bilbo's, you know." There was the scent of linseed oil and the sound of rubbing.

"There's a broken spot here, I'm afraid. Have a look, Sam; do you think you can repair it?"

"Hmm. Aye, I think so. Lucky it's one of the plain bits – I couldn't never match this carving! If any of that's damaged, we'll have to get in the fellow who made that bird you gave me to fix it."

"How much longer, Sam?" I asked. "I need to check on that chicken, make sure it don't scorch."

"Now, keep your patience, lass! I'll see to the chicken. Don't want you to see this till it's looking nice."

It seemed a long time, but finally Frodo said, "All right, Rose, you can look now."

It was the most beautiful cradle I had ever seen. The wood had a strong grain of a deep tone that looked almost green, and it was carved all over with flowing vines and birds and blossoms. The hood was arched so tall, it came nearly to my shoulders, and the inside so wide you could've laid two babies in it, side by side. The only plain part of the whole lovely thing was the rockers, and one of them was broken off on one side.

"I can carve a new rocker, easy enough," Sam said. "How do you like it, Rosie?"

I shook my head, dumbstruck. "I don't know what to say – it's just gorgeous! Mr. Frodo, this was Mr. Bilbo's? Do you really want us to use it?"

"Yes, it was Bilbo's, and yes, I want you to use it! Unless you have a family cradle that you'd rather use? I hadn't thought of that."

I hadn't either, but come to think of it, there was our family cradle, stored up attic at the farm. It wasn't anything like as nice as this, but I was the first one married, of our family, and could be my mother was counting on having the first grandchild sleep in it. That might be a problem.

Sam must have read my face. "It'd be better to have two cradles, Rosie, since they're offered to us. We'll keep this big one here in the kitchen, so you'll have the babe near you while you work. But your family cradle, I'd like to put that in our bedroom for the nights. I know most folk just take the babe to bed with them, but it worries me a little, that does. Might overlay him in my sleep. I'd rest easier having him in his own little bed."

"And of course, it might be twins – definitely a good idea to have two cradles." Mr. Frodo was keeping a straight face, but his eyes danced and I threw him a saucy look.

"Or even triplets, Mr. Frodo, had you thought of that? Then you'll have to help us walk them, nights, when they're teething and can't sleep. Always a good idea to have an extra set of arms around!"

He just smiled. "I'm counting on taking my turn to walk the babe, even if there's only the one," he said, and he didn't sound like he was joking.

Chapter 27: Nightmares

in which Frodo lets down his guard

The baby was due the end of March, little Frodo-lad. We’d planned all along, Sam and me, to name him for Mr. Frodo.

I know now that last month is always a misery, but it was news to me then. I couldn’t bend over to pick anything up off the floor, and if I squatted down, I’d better be near a table or something to pull myself up again. My back hurt, and my belly felt so heavy, I took to walking with my hands under it to help support the weight. Sam chuckled to see me, and I snapped at him.

“Just wait till he gets out, Sam Gamgee, then you can carry young Frodo for a change!”

He took me in his arms and smoothed my hair, turning me sideways to him so’s he could hold me close without the baby coming between us.

“I will, lass, I will. Just a little longer, Rosie, and I’ll carry him all you like. Go sit down now and put your feet up, and I’ll bring you a mug of tea.”

I couldn’t wish for a kinder husband than Sam, and I felt bad that I was so crabby to him, but I was so tired. I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t find any position that felt comfortable. And when I did drop off, the baby would begin to kick till he woke me up again.

“You wretched child, are you doing a jig in there?” I grumbled blearily one night, when he woke me for the third time.

Sam was deep asleep, and I left him lying in bed and started for the kitchen. A cup of chamomile tea might relax me. Maybe I could doze in one of the deep parlor chairs.

Passing Mr. Frodo’s door, I heard a soft cry, and I stopped in the passage to listen. His nightmares were getting more frequent, it seemed like.

He cried out again, and I wondered if I should call Sam to wake him, pull him back from the evil dreams. But Sam was sleeping peaceful, and he'd been working hard all day in the orchard. He'd been so tired when we went to bed, and I was awake already. While I hesitated there was another cry and a crash as if Frodo had fallen out of bed. I flung open the door and rushed in. He was face down on the floor, twisted in the bedclothes he’d dragged down with him in his fall.

“Mr. Frodo! Are you all right?”

He turned his head toward me and his eyes were open, but it was like he didn’t see me, or didn’t know who I was.

“You should have left me,” he said hoarsely. “You should have left me, Sam.”

He scared me, his eyes were so staring and blind-like, but he was pitiful too, lying on the floor in a heap, and I knelt beside him awkwardly, reaching out to stroke his hair.

“Wake up, Mr. Frodo. It was just a bad dream. Wake up now.”

Quicker than I could see, his hand flashed out and clutched my wrist, hard, so I cried out from it.

“Why did you bring me home, Sam? You should’ve left me for the fire!”

“Let go, Mr. Frodo! It’s Rose! Wake up now, sir – wake up!”

Slowly the glazed look left his eyes and he came back to himself. He let go of me and sat up, rubbing his hands over his face. “What happened? Rose? What’s wrong? Is Sam all right?”

I giggled, from shock I guess, and relief at seeing him back to normal. “Sam’s fine, Mr. Frodo – sound asleep, if he hasn’t woken up from all this racket. You had a bad dream, is all, and fell out of bed.”

“Did I wake you, Rosie? I’m sorry. I’m as much trouble as a babe myself, waking the house with my nightmares.”

He unwound the sheets and stood, helping me to my feet. “Come on, I’ll see you safe back to your room. Then I think I’ll make myself a pot of tea; I’m not quite ready to face the dreams again.”

“I was going for some tea anyhow, Mr. Frodo. I can’t seem to get comfortable to sleep, lately. We can keep each other company.”

He smiled down at me, and I thought he was glad not to be alone. But his eyes were shadowed, and the things he’d said, talking in his sleep, bothered me – did he think he was a trouble to us? This wasn’t the first time he’d made comments like that, off hand, like it was a jest. But in his sleep he had sounded serious, desperate even. And his talk about the fire...

I chewed on the question while he made our tea, wondering if I dared bring up the subject, or if I ought to.

Sometimes things left unsaid make more trouble than the things you say, I thought. If Mr. Frodo thought he was a burden to Sam and me, he needed to think again. He set a mug of tea before me, and I looked into his face. He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Mr. Frodo.” I took a deep breath, took my courage in both hands. “You were talking in your sleep, sir.”

He stiffened and looked away. “I’m sorry you had to hear any of that, Rose. Just forget it, please.”

“I can’t just forget it. It was too horrible! You were saying Sam should’ve left you to the fire, not brought you home.” The tears came to my eyes, and I bit down on my lip. I couldn’t go crying now, I needed to finish this. “Mr. Frodo, you saved the Shire; you saved all of Middle Earth from the Shadow. You’re a hero, Mr. Frodo! You were talking like you thought you ought to be punished.”

“A hero,” he repeated. He put his hand on the table, spread it out so every finger was separate, so the gap of the missing finger was as wide as it could be. “The hero who saved Middle Earth from the Dark Lord. And how did I do that, pray? By standing on the edge of the Crack of Doom and having my finger bitten off – because it was the only way to get that thrice-cursed Ring away from me – the Ring I swore to cast into the fire!" He pushed his mug aside. “I don’t think tea is quite what I need tonight.”

He went to the sideboard, grabbed the brandy bottle and a wine glass. Brought them back to the table and filled the glass right to the top.

“Here’s to the hero!” he said, and swallowed it at one go.

“Stop that, Mr. Frodo!” I jumped up and took the bottle away from him, put it back in its place. “You listen to me, now!”

He stared at me, and there was such despair in his face, it about broke my heart. I reached out and took his hand in both of mine. “Listen,” I said again, but I wondered what I could say that might get through the misery in his eyes.

“Mr. Frodo, you got the job done, however it happened. What difference that you didn’t do it all by yourself? So you’re a hero and Sam’s a hero, and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin – you’re all heroes! It was too big of a job for any one person – even Gandalf couldn’t do it all by himself. And you did the biggest part, carrying the Ring to Mordor. It had to get to the Crack of Doom, didn’t it, before Gollum could bite off your finger and fall in with it? He wouldn’t have brought it there himself, that’s certain!”

He began to laugh and I thought for a moment that it was all right, he was all right, but the laughter was all wrong.

“There’s a hero right out of legend,” he gasped. “Right up there with Earendil himself. But don’t forget Gollum, Rose! He’s a hero, too – he’s the one who took the thing into the fire. Only it would’ve been better if he’d pulled me in too, not just my finger! That would have been a proper end to the story.”

“Mr. Frodo – no!”

He seemed to come back to himself then. He looked down at our hands on the table, both of mine still wrapped protectively around his. His eyes met mine, full of such bleak hopelessness that I felt I was drowning in it.

“You don’t understand, Rose. I had the Ring too long; I carried it too far. It still has a hold on me. I still – want it. And I hate it, I hate myself for wanting it, but it doesn’t matter, I still do. I think I always will, as long as I live.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m glad Gandalf came and rescued Sam, saved him for you. But it would have been kinder if he’d left me for the fire.”

I didn’t know what to say. After a bit, he drew his hand away, gently, and warmed up our tea.

“Mr. Frodo,” I said at last.

He was staring into the fire, and I shivered, wondering what he was thinking.

“Mr. Frodo, you did everything you could do. Nobody could’ve done more than you did. And you nearly didn’t come back, but I’m that glad you did! I wouldn’t of never got to know you otherwise – and you’re a hero to me, no matter what you say.”

He smiled, a sad little smile, and reached out his finger to touch the tip of my nose.

“Thank you, Rose. You’re a comforting lass; did you know that? Sam is a lucky hobbit. And he deserves to be – because the real hero of this tale is Samwise Gamgee.”

Chapter 28: Sweet Herbs and Barley Broth

in which Rose turns healer

Mr. Frodo slept late the next morning, and I was thankful for it. I told Sam he’d had a nightmare and fallen out of bed, but that was all.

The things he’d spoken, in his sleep and after – Sam didn’t need to hear that. I wondered if he had talked the same way, the times Sam had woken him out of nightmares, but I wasn’t going to ask.

Sam helped me wash up from breakfast and went out to dig up the vegetable patch – it was pretty near time to plant potatoes – and I dragged a quilt into the parlor and went to sleep in one of the deep-cushioned chairs there. It was bright sunlight woke me up – mercy, but I’d gone and slept the morning away, and here it was time for lunch and not a thing on the fire!

I flung off the quilt and hurried to the kitchen. Cold ham, we had some of that, and cheese. I could stir up some pancakes quick and roll them around apple preserves. It would be a pick-up sort of a meal, but Sam wasn’t fussy, nor the Master neither. I was lucky in my menfolk.

But the kitchen was full of savory smells and the table was set already, set for four, and an enormous mushroom pie right in the middle. As I stood wondering in the doorway, Marigold came out of the pantry carrying a crusty round loaf on the breadboard.

“Surprise!” she said with a laugh. “Go wash the sleep out of your eyes, Rosie, and comb your hair – you look like you slept in it. Then see if you can find Mr. Frodo, will you? I’ll call Sam. Everything’s ready.”

“Marigold, you’re a lamb! I don’t know how you got here, but I’m glad as glad you did!”

We gathered round the table, and Marigold had done herself proud. It was a meal fit for a birthday feast, and Sam was in his glory, proud of his sister’s cooking – as well he might be – and pleased with himself because he’d thought of asking her to come help out. The mushrooms were moving steadily from the pie dish to Sam’s plate, one generous serving after another.

“I came in for second breakfast and you were sleeping so sweet, I couldn’t bear to wake you, Rosie. I know you haven’t been sleeping much at night. So I just nipped down the Hill and got Marigold. She’s going to stay now as long as we need her – till the baby comes and a week or so after, aren’t you, Mari?”

“If that’s all right with Mr. Frodo,” she said, glancing over to where he sat at the end of the table, close to the fire. He didn’t answer, and Sam looked sharp at him. I realized suddenly that he hadn't spoken a word since he sat down. His meal was untouched on his plate, and he sat fingering that jewel he always wore round his neck.

“Mr. Frodo? Are you all right?”

It was a moment before he answered. “What did you say, Sam? I’m sorry, my mind must have been wandering.”

“Marigold is here to help out till after the baby comes, sir. You don’t mind, do you?”

“What? No, of course not! I’m glad you could come, Marigold.” He looked like he was going to say something more and we waited, but he just sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. Then he saw us all staring at him, and he kind of half laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I still feel a little groggy from sleeping so late. I think I’ll get out and walk a bit; the fresh air should wake me up. I’m glad you’re here, Marigold. It will be good for Rose to have some help.”

He got up and left the kitchen, and Sam looked worried.

“I hope he’s not coming down sick,” he said to me under his breath. “He don’t look right, Rosie, nor he don’t sound right, neither.”

I didn’t say nothing, remembering that bad day back in October. Sam said then it was his old wound from the Morgul blade hurting him, but I thought it was more than that. He hardly ate at all for several days, and I woke one night to hear him prowling round the smial in the dark, up and down the passages.

And the first spring after they came home – Mr. Frodo had been staying at the farm then; Bag End was still being repaired. Da had been really alarmed about him; I remembered him and Mum whispering in the kitchen. Sam was away, planting trees in the North Farthing, and Da thought they should send for him – maybe he would know what to do for Frodo. They had talked a long time, but Mum had calmed his fears.

“Now, Tolman, how many childer have I raised, and brought ’em through the fever and the flux and whatever else was going around? Mr. Frodo’s wore out, is all; he’s that run down from all he’s been through. Let me get a good strong broth into him, and some fragrant herbs on the fire to soothe his mind and help him sleep. No need to worry Sam.”

I waited till Sam went back out in the garden; then I sat down and wrote a note.

Dear Da, I hope you are well and all the family. Will you ask Mum to send me up a packet of the herbs she used to help Mr. Frodo sleep when he was staying with us? And I need to know what she put in the broth she made for him that time. Will you ask her and write it down for me, please? We are all well and Marigold is here to help me. The baby isn’t due for two weeks yet, so don’t worry. With dear love from your Rosie.

“Marigold, do you think you could find one of the village lads to take a note to the farm for me?”

Mari looked up from where she was washing dishes, doubt in her eyes. “A note, Rose? Writing, you mean?”

Oh crumbs, I’d forgotten how strange this would seem to her. “That’s right. I need for Mum to send me some things, you see.”

“What things? Besides, Rose, your Mum can’t read, can she?”

“No, but Da can read it to her.”

“Well, but what do you need, all of a sudden? You have everything for the baby, don’t you?”

I chewed my lip. I was hoping Mari hadn’t noticed how odd Mr. Frodo was acting, or that she’d chalk it up to oversleeping, like he said. Mari is my oldest friend, but -- well, it’s natural for people to talk. I didn’t want rumors running through Hobbiton that Frodo was ill, or something worse.

“Some herbs,” I said finally. “I haven’t been sleeping well, you know. And a recipe she has for a strengthening broth.” If necessary, I’d drink some of that broth myself, and steam the herbs on my own fire at night, as well as Mr. Frodo’s! It couldn’t do me any harm. The main thing was to get him the help he needed.

Mari put away the last dish and dried her hands.

“I’ll take it for you myself, Rosie, how will that do?” She dimpled into a smile. “Maybe Tom will bring me back in the pony cart.”

“Perfect! Just flutter your eyelashes and he’ll follow you anywhere. Thank you, Mari!” That’ll be a match one of these days, mark my words, and I couldn’t want a sweeter lass for my big brother.

She was eager to be on her way, with Tom as the lure. It didn’t take her more than half an hour to comb her hair, which was already in perfect order, and try on three dresses before she decided the one she’d been wearing in the first place was the prettiest after all.

I made up the spare room bed for her, then sat and knitted on a baby blanket while she fussed, and I tried not to laugh too openly – I could remember getting all flustered like that, when I thought I might run into Sam somewhere.

Marriage changes things, for true. You can’t be looking your best every hour of the day, nor be on your best behavior, neither. You think you know another person, and then you get married and find out all the things you didn’t know.

I guessed I’d found out a few things about Sam, but nothing that made me love him any less. He’d always seemed so big and strong, when we were children – of course, he was four years older than me. Well, and he was strong! And brave, too, fighting the ruffians like he had, and bringing Mr. Frodo safe home from Mordor. But his heart was soft as butter, and I was worried about him now.

Mr. Frodo’s words the night before troubled me badly. This was more than the terrible memories that Sam had talked of – I didn’t know what to make of this. He was blaming himself for not destroying the Ring, that was clear. And more than that, it was as if he were haunted by the thing -- even though it was gone, he couldn’t let go of it.

I wasn’t sure how Sam would feel about that, if he knew. Sam was like a weathervane for whatever was good – just stick him up in the wind, and he’d point straight to the thing that’s good and clean and right. Well, Mr. Frodo was good. Mr. Frodo was noble and true, but he was tormented, too.

It was the Ring, Rosie, I reminded myself. He carried that thing for so long, and it was just pure Evil, that’s all it was. It’s like it burned a scar into his soul, and it torments him and there’s nothing, nothing at all, he can do to stop it. And what Sam would make of that, loving Frodo like he did, and hating anything evil….

I didn’t think sweet herbs and broth would be enough to heal Mr. Frodo, but they were all I had to work with. That, and our love for him.

He didn’t take at all kindly to the herb kettle steaming over his fire that night, but I shushed him.

“I’m hanging one over my fire too, Mr. Frodo. We didn’t neither one of us sleep good last night, and there’ll be a baby here soon enough to keep us all awake. You better get your sleep while you can, Master.”

I gave him a hard look when I said that, and he hushed. I didn’t often call him Master.

“Thank you, Rose,” he said. There was a quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and I took that for a good sign.

I made the broth the next day, and I made a whopping big pot of it. I knew I’d never get Mr. Frodo to eat it if he thought it was just for him, so I threw in some barley and called it soup.

“It’s a special recipe from my mother, to keep us all healthy this spring. I don’t want anyone getting sick with a new baby in the house, and change of seasons is the sure time for somebody to catch something.” I passed bowls of it round the table. “And nobody gets a bite of those pickled mushrooms till your bowl’s empty,” I said, scowling fiercely at them all.

Sam threw back his head and laughed till the tears came to his eyes.

“My word, lass, I’ve heard you best not get between a mother bear and her cubs, but I think Mama Bear could take lessons from you! Well, I’ve got no objection to being healthy, so dig in and eat hearty!”

It was pretty good soup, for all it was meant as medicine, but it had an unusual flavor. Mr. Frodo tasted it, then looked down the table at me like he knew when he’d tasted it before. I just smiled at him, all innocent, and he lifted one eyebrow.

“I like it better with the barley, Rosie,” was all he said, and he cleaned his bowl.

Chapter 29: Elanor

in which a name is a gentle gift

My mother was coming the last week of March, to stay till the baby came. She’d been midwifeing Hobbiton babies for five or six years, ever since Granny Goodbody passed on. But she didn't come quite soon enough, as it turned out.

There’d been no more disturbances at night. The sweet herbs steaming on the fire sent me off to sleep like a charm; I don’t know if they did that well for Mr. Frodo, but at any rate he wasn’t crying out in his sleep. He was still pale and very quiet, and he took to riding out on his pony soon after breakfast each morning and not coming home till nearly teatime.

Sam worried that he was missing meals, but when he spoke to him about it, Mr. Frodo was right sharp with him – which wasn’t like him, not at all.

“Sam, will you go fuss over your wife and leave me be? I’m neither a child nor an invalid, and I know enough to eat when I’m hungry!”

Sam apologized, but he made sure to tuck some apples and biscuits into the pony’s saddle bag every morning after that.

“And I reckon that’s all I can do, Rosie. It’s true what he says, he’s not a child – it’d be easier taking care of him if he was!”

On the twenty-third I woke up with a backache, and nothing I could do seemed to ease it. I paced up and down the passages, restless as a cat, and Sam hovered over me till I felt some sympathy for Mr. Frodo’s sharpness to him. I bit my tongue and reminded myself how sweet he was to be so concerned for me.

By suppertime the pain had started to come and go, and I was too tired to walk around any more. Mr. Frodo was back by then, and we sat down to eat, but halfway through the meal a pain hit that doubled me over.

“Rosie! Lass, what’s the matter?” Sam was at my side, and I leaned on him till I could speak.

“It’s all right, Sam.” I tried to smile. “It’s all right, it’s just the baby coming a little early. Better send for my Mum, love.”

Frodo jumped up from the table, knocking his chair backward. “I’ll go, Sam. You put Rosie to bed, get her some brandy or something. I’ll get Mistress Cotton.”

He rushed out, and a few minutes later I heard his pony galloping by on the road. Sam helped me into the bedroom and stayed with me, stroking my forehead through the pains and calling me his sweetheart, his dove, his darling lassie, till I thought having a baby might not be so bad after all. Then my mother came and chased him out.

It was a long labor, even for a first baby. Sometime the second night, Sam pushed his way into the room, never mind what Mum had to say about it.

“She’s my wife, she is, and I’m going to see her!”

He looked half wild, his hair standing up like he’d been running his fingers through it, and he went down on his knees by the bed and tried to gather me in his arms. I looked over his shoulder and Mr. Frodo was standing in the doorway. He met my eyes, then he came into the room, setting my mother to one side with gentle firmness, and bent over Sam.

“Come along, Sam lad, Rosie’s busy right now. The ladies will get on better without us in the way.”

He helped Sam to his feet and led him away, an arm around his shoulder, steering him out the door. Sam told me later that Frodo stayed with him the whole time, brewing endless pots of tea and making him eat a little, talking sometimes or just sitting with him, but never leaving him alone.

Finally the second morning came, and so did the baby. The sky outside the window turned pink, and the baby cried, and my mother said, “It’s a beautiful little lass.”

And I cried.

I loved her, oh I loved her, and she was beautiful. I put her to my breast, and she knew just what to do, little as she was, and I nursed her to sleep. And all the time I cried, without a sound, the tears running down my face like rain.

“You’re wore out, and no wonder. Go to sleep now, Rosie lass; you’ve earned it. Come on, I’ll take the baby out for Sam to see, and you sleep, dearie.” She smoothed my hair back and wiped at my wet face, and she gathered the baby into a nest of soft blankets and carried her away.

The door closed behind her, and I buried my face in the pillow and wailed. Oh baby, sweet baby, why did you come out of turn? You should have let Frodo-lad come first, and you could be his little sister. The first was supposed to be Frodo-lad.

I slept, finally. When I woke up, Sam was sitting by my bed in the big rocking chair, the baby in his arms. He didn’t see I was awake, he was so took up with the baby, and the look on his face turned my heart to mush. No fear that Sam was disappointed with his little lass – Sam had fallen in love. And watching him, I fell in love with him all over again.

I reached out my hand to him, and he looked up.

“I don’t guess we can name her for Mr. Frodo,” I said.

He grinned and bent down to kiss me. “Not very well, lass. Not unless we want her to get an awful lot of teasing.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

He sat down next to me on the bed, tucking the baby in my arms and putting his own arms around us both. “No, now, Rosie, don’t be sorry. There’s some reason, likely, why things happen the way they do. But I've been thinking – we can’t call her Frodo-lad, but if you're willing, we can let him have the naming of her.”

He looked down at our baby daughter and stroked the curve of her cheek. Her little mouth moved in her sleep, a tiny rosebud puckering up. “Guess he won’t never have the chance to name one of his own,” he said softly.

So Mr. Frodo had the naming of the baby. Elanor, he called her, after a golden flower in the Elven country. And whether it was the name, or a whiff of Lothlorien they brought back with them from their travels, her hair came in as soft and golden as sunshine, and she got more beautiful every day.

Chapter 30: Comfort

in which Frodo plays uncle and Rose plays school

Mr. Frodo did his share, and more than his share, of walking the baby. She wasn't more than three or four weeks old when she started getting real cranky in the afternoons, just when I was starting supper. She wasn't hungry nor she wasn't wet, neither – she was just cranky. Nothing would satisfy her but to be walked, and just at the time of day when I couldn't do it.

She was lying in the big cradle one afternoon, screaming like someone was poking her with pins, while I tried to finish cutting up a chicken so's I could get it on to cook and pick her up. It's a poor idea to try and hurry while you're boning a chicken. The knife slipped and gashed me good, and I had to drop everything to wash the cut and try to stop the bleeding, and all the time Elanor shrieked herself into a frenzy.

"Be quiet, for mercy sake!" I finally snapped at her, and I'm ashamed to say my voice was pretty near as loud as hers. "I'll pick you up soon's I get this cut bandaged – now hush!"

About then Mr. Frodo walked in. "What's the matter with the baby?" he asked, and I could've sunk through the floor, I was so mortified. If I couldn't keep one baby quiet, without disturbing the master at his writing, all the way down the passage in his study!

I was still trying to stop the bleeding – I'd sliced myself pretty deep – and he went and picked her up, wrapping her blanket around her and cuddling her in his arms.

"There, Elanor, what's the matter? Is no one taking care of you today?" He came over to see what I was doing.

"Good heavens, Rose, what have you done to yourself? I'd better call Sam!"

"No, Mr. Frodo, don't bother him. It's stopped bleeding; let me bandage it up and I'll be fine. Hold her just a minute more, would you, sir?"

Elanor had quit crying at finding herself picked up. She snuggled against his chest and looked ready to fall asleep.

"Is she hungry?" He went to sit down, but her eyes flew open and she gave a little wail of protest. He straightened up quick and walked her over to the window. "No, Elanor, don't cry! Look out the window, that's a good lass. Look at the sunset – it's as pink as your baby lips, did you know that?" He bent his head and kissed the tip of her nose, and she blinked.

"She's not hungry; she just ate. Mum says it's colic – she just cries for an hour or so every afternoon. I wish she'd pick some other time of day – just when I'm trying to cook!"

He looked perplexed. "I've never been around babies much, Rose. What is that? Isn't there something you can do for it?" I reached to take Elly from him, but he turned his shoulder to me. "Let me hold her a while? She's quiet now, and I haven't had much chance to hold her."

"Well, you can hold her any time you like, Mr. Frodo, except when she's feeding. Every afternoon about this time would be good!" I was teasing, meaning it for a joke, but he jumped at the idea like I'd offered him a present.

"Would that be a help to you, Rose? If I take her while you're making supper? Is there anything we can do about the – colic, did you say? Sounds like a pony!"

I had to laugh at that. "I guess it's not so serious in babies, Mr. Frodo! Just makes 'em cry. I tried her on some chamomile tea, but I can't say it did much for her. Mostly she just wants to be walked around, till she falls asleep. I could bind her to me with a shawl, but I'm nervous about doing that, when I'm working round the fire."

"No, no, don't do that! Not when you're cooking. I can walk her, Rose. It'll give us a chance to get to know each other, won't it, Elanor?"

He bounced her a little in his arms, looking into her face, and she peered up at him in the near-sighted way of babies. And from that day on, he'd appear in the kitchen as soon as she began to cry in the afternoon, as if he'd been listening for her.

He'd take her to the window, commenting on the weather for her benefit, and pass the time of day with me for a few minutes. Then he'd carry her away out of the kitchen, all around the smial, from room to room. I could hear him talking to her as he went down the passage – and he never talked baby talk, neither; he spoke to her like she was a child of many summers, well able to understand him.

"Let's go in the parlour today, Elanor. I want to introduce you to Bilbo."

That gave me pause for a moment, I can tell you, till I remembered the big portrait of Bilbo that hung in the parlour! All the same, I dried my hands and followed softly after them, to watch from the doorway. Frodo carried her over to the portrait and held her so she was facing it.

"There now, that's my uncle Bilbo. Well, cousin, actually, to be strictly accurate. But I called him Uncle, and if he were here and you knew how to talk yet, Elanor, he'd tell you to do the same. And then he'd tell you stories, wonderful stories, like he used to tell me when I was a little lad."

He sighed and fell silent, and I thought suddenly that I had no business being there, eavesdropping on him. I tiptoed back to the kitchen, hoping he hadn't heard me. He sounded sad, and lonely for Bilbo. But he looked cheerful enough when he came to supper an hour later, and I thought maybe Elanor was a comfort to him.

He was writing all day long now, and I guess he needed some comfort. By the conversation round the supper table, he'd got to some bad parts of the story, and the nightmares were coming several times a week.

We hadn't never started school again after Yule. First he was gone to Buckland till near the end of January, and when he got back, he worried that it would be too much for me, all that cooking, with the baby so near. By the time I was up and around after the birth, stout enough that we could've started again, it was well into spring and the lads were needed in garden and field. It was too bad, for the school had been good for him – it cheered him up, being around the lads. And seemed like it troubled him, too, that their learning was interrupted so much.

"Can't be helped, Mr. Frodo," Sam told him. "You done a lot, just getting them here to learn their letters and how to write a little. We can start up again once the crops are in. If we only do ten weeks a year, it's still more school than Hobbiton ever had before."

Frodo sighed. "You're right, of course. But it's not enough. When you're Mayor, Sam –"

Marigold was there that day – she came a couple of times a week to help with the laundry and heavy work (and get her share of cuddling her baby niece). She interrupted with a laugh.

"When Sam is Mayor, Mr. Frodo?!"

I thought Sam would pull her up sharp for being rude to the master, but he only nodded.

"You need to get that bee out of your bonnet, Mr. Frodo, and that's a fact. Gamgees don't become Mayor of the Shire. Gamgees are gardeners and ropemakers and farmhands. You better think about running for Mayor yourself, one of these days, when old Will retires. The Shire'd be in good hands, it would, with you for Mayor, and Pippin for Thain, and Mr. Merry the Master of Buckland."

"I've done my time as Mayor, Sam." He was looking at Sam like he meant a lot more than he was saying. "It'll be you or none of us, I'm afraid. And when you're Mayor, you'll need to get more schools going, all over the Shire. You might start keeping an eye open, even now, for possible schoolmasters. Fosco would make a good one."

Sam thought about that. "Aye, he would, at that. He knows a lot of your stories, and he's getting good schooling, out there in Buckland." He grinned. "You might keep that in mind, when you're Mayor, Mr. Frodo."

We'd been talking over noon dinner, and we were about done. Sam and Mr. Frodo went back to their work, in garden and study, and Mari and I started clearing up.

"Do you read those books, really, Rose?" Mari nodded toward the kitchen bookcase.

"Sometimes," I admitted. "I did a lot of reading before the baby came – I don't have so much time, now! There's even a cookery book there, Mari, and a book of herbs for healing – it's not just tales, not at all."

"Your Da was pretty proud of you, learning to read. Tom, too. They think you're about the smartest lass around."

She sounded wistful, and I had a sudden idea. "Would you like to learn how, Mari? I could teach you."

"Do you think I could, really? Is it hard?" She giggled. "I'd like to surprise Tom, let him see I'm smart, too…!"

"It's not hard, and I was helping Fosco, so I'm sure I could teach you. Come on, hurry up with the dishes, and we'll start before Elanor wakes up from her nap."

And that's how I started teaching Marigold. We kept it secret for a long time, till one day Mr. Frodo came out to the kitchen for a snack and caught us. Mari knew all her letters by then, and I was writing sentences on one of the school slates for her to read and copy. We had our backs to the passage, and we were concentrating so hard, we never heard him come in.

"The hen is in the pen. The cat ate the fat hen." I heard his quiet voice behind me, reading, and a sudden laugh. "Having trouble with your chickens, are you, Rosie?"

Mari jumped like she'd been stung by a bee, and covered her slate with her arms. I guess maybe she thought Mr. Frodo wouldn't approve of her reading – a lass, and a Gamgee at that! She didn't know him very well, even as much as she'd been at Bag End – it was hard for her to get past the idea that he was gentry. But I knew he wouldn't mind; in fact, he'd be delighted. He would've been glad to have every hobbit in the Shire reading.

I hadn't thought about it, but it hit me in that moment that it was as much for Mr. Frodo, as for Mari's own sake, that I'd been teaching her. I smiled up at him.

"The chickens are fine, Mr. Frodo. We've even got extras – deep dish chicken pie for dinner tomorrow. Mari wants to surprise my brother with her reading, so you won't tell, will you?"

"An army of orcs wouldn't drag it from me. Does Sam know?"

"No, Mr. Frodo – don't tell him, please! He'd tease me," Mari said quickly.

"Not a word, Marigold, on my honour!" He met her eyes with a smile, and after a moment she dimpled back at him. Friends, now. See, Mari, Mr. Frodo is a good sort, even if he is Master of Bag End.

But he had the last word, late that night. Sam had already gone to our room and I was banking the kitchen fire, when Frodo came bringing his empty mug from the study. He'd gone back to work for an hour, after our evening reading time. He came over where I was kneeling by the fireplace and rested his hand on my head.

"What a comfort you are, lass! I worry myself half to death because the lads aren't getting their schooling, and all the time you're teaching Marigold! You're a treasure, Rosie, more than all Bilbo's gold."

I craned my neck to look up at him. "I knew you'd like for her to learn, Mr. Frodo. And someday she'll teach her children, you know – she's that proud to be learning –"

He nodded. "Yes. It will spread, little by little, like the ripples when you drop a stone in a pool. Thank you, Rose."

Chapter 31: Midsummer Fair

in which they do the best they can

Merry and Pippin came to visit the week before Mid-year. Mr. Frodo had finished writing their part in the Red Book, and he wanted them to read it, tell him if he'd got anything wrong. I'm sure they thought they'd spend a few days going over it, and then carry him off to the Fair like Mr. Merry had the year before, but it didn't work this time.

"I'm sorry, cousins, but I'm staying home. I agree with the Gaffer – they won't be showing anything I haven't seen before, and I'd rather be snug in my own hole. You can place a bet for me on whichever pony you fancy, and drink my health in the beer tent if it wins."

"Frodo! Place a bet for you – we're racing, you nitwit, both of us! Aren't you going to be there to cheer us on?" Mr. Pippin sounded genuinely aggrieved, and Frodo looked sorry.

"Pippin –" he began.

"Are you ill, Frodo?" Merry asked. "You don't have much of an appetite."

They were at dinner, with Sam and me serving, and for true, Mr. Frodo hadn't eaten much. It was a warm evening and the dining room was stuffy, even with the windows open. We didn't serve dinner outside when there were guests.

"I'm just tired, Merry. I'm all right, but I'll sleep better in my own bed."

Mr. Merry didn't answer, but his look said it all. You're not sleeping well, cousin, in your own bed or not. Frodo had had two nightmares since they'd been at Bag End. Sam had gone in to wake him soon's he started shouting, and no one said anything about it, but there was no way they hadn't heard. I wondered suddenly if that was why he wouldn't go to the Fair.

They left the next morning; they had to get back to the stables at Great Smials, get their ponies ready for the races. Mr. Merry pulled Sam aside before they went.

"He needs to get away, Sam. Try and get him to go with you and Rose."

"He'll be there, Mr. Merry, or else I won't be. I won't go without him."

Sam's tone was sober and I knew he meant what he said. But – not go to the Fair! I'd never missed the Mid-year Fair, not once in my whole life, nor he hadn't neither – only the year he was away on the Quest. Still, if Mr. Frodo didn't change his mind, would I be willing to leave him home all by himself? Fosco wasn't here now, for them to look after each other.

No, I decided. Even if it meant not going ourselves, we wouldn't leave him alone at Bag End. He's been through worse things, Rosie, half my mind argued back. A lot worse things than a few days alone in his own home. But it didn't matter; I wasn't about to leave him. I was getting as bad as Sam.

"If worse comes to worse, Rosie lass, you can go with your folks. No need for you to miss out, if I have to stay home."

It was the afternoon before the Fair, and we were in the garden picking sugar peas. Sam had planted plenty, remembering how well they'd sold last summer – we'd send them in my Da's wagon, whether we went ourselves or not.

"No, Sam. Wouldn't be no pleasure to me, if you weren't there. We'll all go, or we'll all stay home. You think Mr. Frodo's afraid he'll have a nightmare, out there with half the Shire to hear him?"

There was a quiet chuckle from the far end of the row, just outside the garden. "Do I have no secrets from you at all, Rose Gamgee?"

I stood up slowly, horrified, and looked down the row. Mr. Frodo stood on the grass verge next to the vegetable patch, lighting his pipe. He must have come outside just in time to hear me. I was too ashamed to answer, caught out like that, talking about him behind his back, but Sam spoke for me.

"Hard to keep secrets from a lass as knowing as my Rose, Mr. Frodo. She won't tell your secrets, though, no more than I would."

"I know that, Sam. There's not a loyaler heart in the Shire, unless it's your own." He was pacing along the edge of the garden as he spoke, his eyes taking in the ranks of young carrots and beets and the pea vines growing up their netting. He came back to the end of the row and turned to face us. "You two don't need to stay home from the Fair, just because I'm not going. I know you find this hard to believe, but I'm not quite in my dotage, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding!" His crooked grin flashed out, as warm as it was rare, making him look like a lad again. But there were shadows of fatigue under his eyes, and the hair at his temples was touched with grey.

Sam reached for my hand and squeezed it gently. "I tell you what, Mr. Frodo, you could share a tent with us. I bought our own last summer; it's brand new, never used. You bed down next to me, and if I feel you stirring, I'll wake you up right quick, before you make a sound."

"Oh, Sam." Frodo sighed. Smiled. "What did I ever do to deserve such a friend? But there's no need to bring me into your tent – go along and enjoy yourselves, show off the baby – I'll be perfectly fine at home, I promise. You can bring me back a fairing. A packet of pipeweed, Southern Star, how will that do?"

"Begging your pardon, sir, it won't do at all! Rosie is right – we'll all go, or we'll all stay home. And why shouldn't we bring you into our tent? You brought us into your smial, didn't you? Turnabout is fair play, Mr. Frodo."

"And think how happy Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin would be, seeing you at the racetrack after all," I said. "We could go just for that one day, Mr. Frodo, to see the races. We could even drive back that same night, not sleep over at all, if you'd like that better."

"That would make a long day for Elanor – for you too, Rose. Can't you persuade Sam to stop fussing over me long enough to take you to the Fair?"

Sam snorted. "And can't you trust me, Mr. Frodo, to wake you up if it's needful? Come along with us, sir, and give your cousins a pleasant surprise. They'll race twice as well, knowing you're in the stands."

"We won't go without you, Master," I said softly. "If you don't go, we'll all stay home."

We stood hand in hand among the garden rows, bullying him, and finally he gave in. "Very well – if that's the way it has to be, we'll all go. It's on your own head, Sam, if you're awake all night, keeping me quiet and respectable!" But he laughed when he said it, and he came right into the garden, stepping carefully over the rows, till he came to where we were. He reached out to take our hands, but we just gathered him into a three-way hug.

So we all went to the Fair, Mr. Frodo riding his pony and us in the cart. We started early, before it was full light, so's Sam could be there for the judging of garden stuff. I think Mr. Frodo would've been happiest just to walk round with me, spelling me at carrying Elanor when my arms got tired, and rummaging through the book stalls, but Fatty Bolger spotted him and haled him off to the beer tent. I went and found my Mum in the exhibition hall, and she took the baby right off my hands and carried her away to show off to her cousins from Needlehole who hadn't seen her yet.

I looked for Marigold, but she'd gone with Tom already to look over the ponies and try to pick a winner. Two's company, I thought, and didn't go after them. I searched out one of the book stalls instead – no better place to find a fairing for my husband! I was paging through a book about strange beasts, with pictures of oliphaunts and dragons and who knows what, when someone covered my eyes and growled, "Guess who!" in a gravely voice.

My eyes were covered, but whoever it was couldn't be so awfully tall – there was a lot of weight on my shoulders like they were standing tiptoe and leaning on me. "Nibs," I said, "and get off me, you great ox, you're breaking my back!"

The weight shifted and one hand slid off my eyes. "Guess again!" The voice cracked on a giggle, and I spun round suddenly and caught his wrists.

"Fosco, you rascal! If you haven't grown a head taller since I saw you last! What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, Mistress Rose – looking at the books. Mr. Merry, he gave me a coin to buy something with – I've been looking after his pony, you know. Is Mr. Frodo here?"

"Yes, he's here; he'll be at the races. Are the Captains in the first heat?"

"First and last. Captain Merry said he'd give Captain Pippin two chances to make up for losing last year. Are you going to buy a book?"

"For Master Samwise. Do you want to help me pick it out?"

Silly question, of course he did. We dug through the books, arguing back and forth whether Sam would like the animal one best, or an illustrated guide to wild plants of the Shire, or a faded volume of the Memoirs of Bandobras Took. But it was Fos who found it at last, the perfect thing.

"Here you go, Mistress Rose! Look – The Mastery of Chess! Get him that and let him study it next winter, and maybe he'll finally beat Mr. Frodo."

We grinned at each other like conspirators – what a joke, if Sam should beat Mr. Frodo at last, and all from reading a book! I bought it and hid it away in my bag, and Fos bought the animal book for himself. Then some of his friends from Buckland came by and shouted for him, and he ran off to join them. I didn't think till after he'd left, that I'd forgotten to ask after his mother, and was he happy at Brandy Hall. But he looked happy enough, in all conscience.

I went to find my mother – and my daughter – warmed by seeing Fosco again, and thinking happily of the coming winter, when maybe Sam would take a game from Mr. Frodo, and how we would laugh. Never dreaming that when winter came, Frodo would be long gone, and the little book on chess would sit unread on the kitchen shelf for years to come, till Merry-lad found it at last, and learned enough to beat his Da.

I'm glad we can't see into the future, for it would have spoiled that happy day entirely, if I had known what was to come. And it was happy. Not like Overlithe the year before, but glad and sweet. Mr. Merry won the first heat, and Mr. Pippin growled and glowered at him and threatened retribution all through luncheon. But at the end of the day, Mr. Pippin led the field, and even Merry never came within a length of him, and Frodo near lifted him off the ground with his hug.

We sat round the bonfire till late, Elanor sleeping in my arms as I leaned against Sam's broad chest.

"I saw Fosco today," I said during a lull in the conversation. "He looks happy."

Mr. Merry chuckled. "That lad! Smart as a whip, and harder to corral than a half-broke colt! I'm glad I'm at Crickhollow these days and not at the Hall."

"Why, is he making trouble?" Mr. Frodo sounded concerned. Well, it was him sent Fos to Buckland, after all.

"No, not trouble, precisely. Just keeps things stirred up. My mother says he reminds her of you, Frodo, when you were growing up. Makes life interesting, you know."

Frodo groaned. "I'm sorry, Merry. Will my aunt ever forgive me, do you think? Raising me was surely enough of a penance, without foisting another such lad on the poor lady!"

Mr. Pippin laughed aloud. "Don't you worry, Frodo; it keeps her young, trying to think what he'll be into next and forestall him. And the schoolmaster can't say enough to praise him – the Hall will be lucky to have him, when he gets a bit older."

"I've got him marked for schoolmaster himself, one day," Merry agreed. "None of his pupils will be able to pull the wool over his eyes; there won't be a trick in the book he hasn't tried himself! Didn't he keep you hopping when he was at Bag End, Frodo?"

"No, he was meek as a lamb with me. Maybe he was too frightened of being sent back to Ted's bullying, to get into mischief."

I sat quiet, rocking the baby. It wasn't my place to speak up, but I didn't think it was fear of being sent away that had kept Fosco on his best behavior at Bag End. More that he adored Mr. Frodo and tried hard to please him.

The fire died down, finally, and we found our way across the field to our tent. The Captains had looked surprised when they realized that Mr. Frodo was spending the night with us, but they didn't say nothing. After a moment, Mr. Merry met Sam's eyes and nodded once, like he approved.

We spread a couple of featherbeds down on the groundcloth, and Sam lay down between me and Mr. Frodo, while I cuddled Elanor. It was a warm night, and we didn't need but a light blanket on top to keep us cosy. Sam kissed me goodnight, then turned his back to me and put an arm over Frodo.

"All right, Master, you sleep now and don't worry. I'll know if you slip into nightmare, and I'll wake you right up."

And maybe he wouldn't have had any nightmares anyway, or maybe it was Sam's arm around him, steady and comforting, but he slept through the night with never a whimper. The next morning we went round the booths as soon as they opened, and Mr. Frodo bought a fancy bonnet for Elanor and a carved wooden bracelet for me, and finally a strong clasp knife for Sam, who'd lost his the previous week. Sam stocked up on pipeweed and I got a dozen packets of different spices that we couldn't grow in the Shire, and we were on our way home before the sun got high in the sky.

It wasn't the best Fair I ever knew, but we got there, at least. And it was Mr. Frodo's last Fair in the Shire.

Chapter 32: Visitors

in which Rosie meets an Elf

I guess we hadn't been home from the Fair more than three or four days, when we had another visitor – and this one I won't never forget, not if I live to be a hundred and ten.

School was starting the next day, and I was washing the lads' slates, dusty from lying on a pantry shelf since back before Yule. Mr. Frodo was looking through the kitchen bookcase for beginning reading books that he could use with the lads. And suddenly Sam came charging into the kitchen, looking like something had happened and he was trying hard to keep calm.

"Mr. Frodo, you have a visitor. I put him in the parlour, sir." He went right up to Frodo and looked him over critically. "You might want to have a quick wash, Master, before you go in there. I can see we need to dust them books more often."

Frodo put down the book he was looking at, and I jumped to get him a basin of clean water. "Who is it, Sam?" he asked.

"Don't know his name, sir, but he's come from Rivendell. He's an elf."

"Rivendell!" Mr. Frodo looked alarmed, and I never saw anyone get washed and combed as fast as he did, his hand shaking so he could hardly drag the comb through his hair. He took a last, quick look in the kitchen glass and went down the passage with his face set and shoulders braced like he feared the worst.

"What have we got, Rosie, that we can serve them? Not tea, not for an elf. I'd better bring up some wine." Sam disappeared down cellar, and I ducked into the pantry.

An elf at Bag End! What on earth did they eat? Not seedcake – it would go well with wine, but it wasn't special enough for such company. I'd made cherry tarts for school tomorrow, and walnut crumbles for our tea today; they would have to do.

Sam carried in the tray when Frodo rang and came back looking relieved. He wrapped his arms round me and leaned his cheek against my hair.

"That was a scare, right enough, Rosie. I was afraid he'd come to bring word that Mr. Bilbo was – gone." He sighed deep and held me close.

"Guess it scared Mr. Frodo, too. What did he come for, Sam?"

Sam grinned. "Now. how would I know that, lass? But Mr. Frodo's having a pleasant visit, seemingly; he was laughing at something when I went in. Looked like he had a letter; maybe that's all he come for, to deliver it."

We didn't see much of the elf, as it turned out. Mr. Frodo had Sam set their dinner out on the little gateleg table in his study, and he served it himself. Sam let me go in later to clear away the dishes ("I've never seen an elf, Sam – you've seen plenty, now let me have a chance!") but Mr. Frodo and his guest were outside strolling round the garden in the moonlight.

Sam looked in once more before bedtime to see if they needed anything, and just as he reached the door he heard the elf say, "Elrond sends you word." Frodo looked up then and saw him in the doorway.

"Come in, Sam, and meet our guest. Galend is new to Rivendell; that's why you didn't recognize him," he said. "Galend, this is Master Samwise, my companion on the Quest. Apart from him, I fear it would have had a far different ending."

The elf rose and bowed deeply to Sam, and he was still red-faced and flustered when he got back to the kitchen. "Now how do you say 'how-do-ye-do' after an introduction like that, I ask you, Rosie?"

He was embarrassed, for true, and yet I think he was pleased, deep down. Not being a fool, he knew well enough, Sam did, that without him the Quest must have failed. "It took both of us, Rosie, it did indeed," he told me once. "Without me, he'd a died afore he ever got to the Mountain – but apart from him, we wouldn't've never set out at all. For certain I wouldn't've stood up in Rivendell and offered to take the Ring to Mordor!"

"Well, but isn't that exactly what you did do, Sam?"

"No. Not to take the Ring, nor go to Mordor neither. What I said was, I wouldn't leave Mr. Frodo. 'Twas him decided where we were going."

I thought probably we'd put off the start of school, since Mr. Frodo had a guest, but it wasn't necessary. Galend left just after dawn – and he didn't say no to a hot mug of tea before he left, and some seedcake and fresh raspberries, as well. They took their breakfast by the kitchen fire, like Mr. Frodo always did, so I finally got a look at him.

He was tall, of course. Tall and slim, like a young birch – and graceful, too, like a birch – but he looked strong, as well, as if he'd know how to handle the sword at his side. His hair was long and straight, so silky looking that I wished I dared touch it. And his face – well, now I understood why Sam always said Mr. Frodo had an Elven look to him.

They didn't talk much. Mr. Frodo introduced me, and even got Elanor out of her cradle, brought her over for the elf to see. He held out a long, slender finger to her, and she grabbed hold and brought it to her mouth, then looked up at him and crowed. Elanor was always at her best, first thing in the morning, and Galend seemed taken with her. He had a nice smile, I'll say that for him.

Soon as they'd finished eating, they went outside. Mr. Frodo was gone perhaps half an hour, and he came back alone.

"He didn't stay long, Mr. Frodo," I said. Sam and I were having our breakfast, a bit more substantial than seedcake and raspberries. I got up to fill a plate for Frodo, and he poured himself another mug of tea.

"No, he only came to bring me a letter from Bilbo."

Sam looked up. "And is he well, Mr. Frodo?"

"Yes, he's well. I wrote him soon after Elanor's birth, and he sends his best to the Gamgee family, young and old." He turned the subject. "Are you ready to start cooking for a crowd again, Rosie? The lads should be here soon."

There were ten lads this term – Balco's Da had been talking up how useful it was, Balco being lettered. His brother Bingo was among the pupils, but Balco himself didn't return – his father figured he had as much learning as he needed, now he could keep accounts for the smithy. But a number of other families had decided it was worth the trouble to send their youngsters, and four of our old pupils had returned as well.

"And Balco wanted to come," Bingo announced over elevenses. "He says you tell the best stories, Mr. Frodo, and he told me I better remember them, if I know what's good for me, and tell him when I get home!"

Mr. Frodo grinned. "Well, you'd better listen carefully then, Bingo. I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Balco, myself."

School went on as it had before, the four lads who already knew how to read helping the others learn their letters, then reading with Mr. Frodo while the new pupils practiced writing on their slates. After a few days, Frodo set them playing chess against each other while he was teaching the new lads. And before dinner, every day, they all settled down together to listen to his stories.

After the lads left each afternoon, Frodo went back to work on his book. He didn't stop for afternoon tea, but had me bring it in the study for him, and he went back to his desk again after supper while Sam and I washed up. The summer evenings were long, and he worked while the light lasted, finally coming outside in the dusk, to sit with us in the garden and rock Elanor to sleep in his arms.

"No more reading to us, Mr. Frodo?" I asked one night.

He looked up from where he was watching the baby sleep. He often held her long after she dropped off, his expression peaceful as he gazed into her face, his rocking chair grating against the stone flags, back and forth.

"Do you miss it, Rosie? But you can read yourself, now."

"It was nice, though, listening. Only it's too dark to see out here, and in the kitchen it's too warm."

"Will you tell us a tale, Mr. Frodo?" Sam spoke from the shadows. "You know enough of them by heart."

So that night, and many nights after, he told us stories – not about the Elves, this time, or great deeds in the outer world, but hobbit stories. Old Bullroarer lived again in his tales, tall enough to ride a horse, leading the Shire against the orcs. Marco and Blanco crossed the Brandywine and laid claim to the Shire, and hobbit bowmen set out to the aid of the King at Norbury, in his last battle against the Witch-king. The first Thain was chosen, and the first Brandybuck crossed the river in the other direction and began excavating Brandy Hall. Hobbits starved in the Days of Dearth, and fought white wolves that came out of the north and crossed the frozen river, but the Shire survived. A thousand years of hobbit history passed before our eyes, brought to life by Frodo's quiet voice.

The weeks went by, sunny and hot, and the newest pupils learned their letters and got so they could read a little. Sam and I were called in once again for end-of-school exercises, and the four who had been with us from the beginning had each written out one of Mr. Frodo's stories, which they read aloud. School was over and harvest begun, and Mr. Pippin came to visit.

I don't think Mr. Frodo was expecting him. Pippin and Merry had been visiting Mr. Merry's family in Brandy Hall – the deep holes there were cooler than the Crickhollow house, in this hot weather – and now Mr. Pippin was on his way to the Great Smials to spend a few weeks with his family. You couldn't really say Hobbiton was "on the way" to the Smials, but close enough.

He said he wanted to check on Frodo, make sure he wasn't working too hard, and I do believe that was partly why he came. But he didn't seem any too happy to be going to the Smials – rumor had it the Thain was a hard father to him, never mind if he was a Knight of Gondor and hero of Bywater. I think he came to Mr. Frodo to steady himself, before he went home.

He brought four bottles of the "Hall's finest", carefully wrapped, slung behind his saddle. Brandy Hall came by its name honestly, and he and Mr. Frodo sat up late that first night, talking over their glasses. I got up for a drink of water near midnight, and there were still soft voices coming from the study.

Mr. Pippin slept late next morning, but Mr. Frodo was in his usual place at breakfast, and then went straight to his book. After luncheon, Pippin near dragged him out for a ride round the countryside.

"When were you last outside, Frodo? You're as pale as a mushroom; don't you ever go out at all?"

"Of course I do, every night when it cools down a bit. Don't nag, Pippin."

"In the dark." Mr. Pippin sounded like he'd suspected as much. "You'd better show your face in daylight a bit more, cousin, or they'll be sending a Shirriff to Bag End to see what's become of you! I stopped for a pint at the Green Dragon, coming here, and the proprietor said he hadn't seen you since last winter, and wanted to know if you were ill. You know how hobbits are for gossip."

Frodo grimaced, then smiled. "All right, Pippin. Come along, the mushroom will venture out in the sun – anything to keep you happy, cousin!"

"Oh, well, in that case, come to the Smials with me for a fortnight!"

Mr. Frodo chuckled and rapped the back of his head – he had to reach up to do it; Mr. Pippin was more than a head taller than he was. "Don't push your luck, Pippin."

They went off laughing to saddle the ponies, and I wished, not for the first time, that Mr. Pippin would just move into Bag End and stay. He had a lightness of spirit that was contagious, and Frodo always brightened in his presence.

He brightened even more at Pippin's news. True to his word, Merry had started a school in Buckland and, for good measure, another one in the Marish. They were both flourishing, nearly twenty pupils in all. The Buckland school had had two terms already, and the one in the Marish had just finished its first.

"Oh aye, they're a likely set of lads, both places. We go once or twice a fortnight, Merry and I, teach them chess, and a bit of fencing with wooden swords. Merry's ordered some proper foils for them – should be ready for the winter term."

"There now, Mr. Frodo, you see? All your worry about the lads' learning – and there's three new schools, after all!" Sam grinned at him across the breakfast table, and Frodo chuckled.

"You're right, Sam. There's no need to fear for the Shire, not with hobbits like you and Rose and my cousins to look out for its future." Sam turned to spear another slice of ham, and Frodo winked at me. Sam still didn't know that Marigold could read now.

All too soon, Mr. Pippin had to leave, and Mr. Frodo returned to his study. He wasn't quite so pale as he had been – Pippin had drawn him out into the sunshine every day, the week he was with us, and he'd got a bit of color in his cheeks. But when he came out to noon dinner, the day Pippin left, he looked uncommon tired, and I wondered if the visit had done him any lasting good.

Chapter 33: Rosie's Worry

in which Rose hears a secret

It was the first of September. After Pippin's visit, Mr. Frodo had ridden out several times, alone or with Sam, but it didn't last. The weather was fine, but he rarely went beyond the garden, and it seemed to me like he was getting thinner. He sat all day in his study, writing away in his red book as if a taskmaster stood over him and wouldn't let him stop.

He didn't come out to the kitchen for snacks anymore, and I got in the habit of bringing him a little something at mid-morning, and again in the afternoon – a pot of tea and something light but nourishing, that I thought he might fancy. I made blackberry buckle, to tempt his appetite, and cheese straws, and light little biscuits with a fruit compote. He drank the tea, but usually the food was left untouched, even the seedcake, and I ended up giving it to the chickens. I never thought I'd see the day Mr. Frodo turned down seedcake.

The Gaffer was ailing – he'd caught a summer cold that hung on and on, and Sam was down at his old home many an evening looking after him so Marigold could get out with her beau. My brother Tom was courting her in earnest now, and they would walk the country lanes and byways, sit on a log bridge across the stream that ran down to the Mill, maybe stop by the farm for a spell. And Sam was working all day. I don't think he realized that everything wasn't right with Mr. Frodo, and I didn't want to worry him.

I was worried, though. Those spells of his back in the fall, and again just before Elanor was born – I had been hoping we’d seen the last of those. I’d been trying to build him up with good food and peaceful surroundings, but it looked like he was going downhill again.

Finally I spoke to him. I was rocking Elanor to sleep by the kitchen window and he came up the cellar steps with his mug of beer. He smiled and nodded to me, but he would've gone right back in his study, only I called to him, soft, so I wouldn’t wake the baby.

"Mr. Frodo, come and sit a while. It's lonesome with Sam down to the Gaffer's."

"How is the Gaffer, Rose? I don't like to ask Sam. It's nothing serious, I hope?"

He sat down in the other rocker. The scent of Sam's herb garden came in the open window, spicy on the night air.

"I don't think so, just a cold that won't let go. But it makes him crabby – more than usual, I mean – and he don't like to be left alone. Makes him feel neglected, I guess, and he's not well enough to go down to the Ivy Bush, so Sam sits with him.

"Oh, I meant to tell you – it'll make you laugh – remember how he never wanted Sam to play checkers? Well, he's so bored now, stuck inside all day, he let Sam teach him, and now he never wants to stop! Sam says he's that tired of checkers, he'd throw them on the fire as soon as look at 'em!"

Frodo did laugh at that, and I felt pleased with myself. It gave me the courage to speak up.

"What about you, Mr. Frodo? You don't seem like yourself, lately."

He shot me a glance that would've silenced me when I first came to Bag End, but not now. It was no use for Mr. Frodo to come the master over me anymore; I knew him too well. He was master, right enough; I never forgot it, but I served him out of love, the same as Sam.

"You're getting thin, Mr. Frodo. You're not eating, and by the circles under your eyes, you're not sleeping, neither."

"Well, I'm working hard on my book, Rose." He pulled out his pipe and got very busy filling it, avoiding my eyes.

"I think you're working too hard, sir, if you'll pardon me saying so. You shouldn't wreck your health over it, Mr. Frodo. You need to get out and walk like you used to."

"I don't want to walk; I just want to get it done. I want to finish before my birthday." He bent his head to light his pipe, and the smoke mingled with the spicy smell from the garden.

"Mr. Frodo, please, take care of yourself. Whether you finish it by your birthday, or next spring, what difference? It's not worth it, if you make yourself sick over it."

I shifted Elanor to my shoulder and reached out my hand to him, and he took it and smiled at me.

"I won't, Rosie. You've got enough to do as it is; you don't need me sick into the bargain."

"Mr. Frodo! You know that's not what I meant!"

He laughed, but his next words sobered me like a bucket of cold water over my head.

"I want to finish before my birthday – because I'm going to go see Bilbo for his birthday." He looked at me hard. "Now that's a secret I'm trusting you with, Rosie; I haven't told Sam yet. You won't give me away, will you?"

"You're going away? All the way to Rivendell? Oh, Mr. Frodo! No, I won't tell Sam; you'll have to do that yourself. That'll break his heart, that will, having you gone this winter."

He looked out the window, but something in his expression warned me.

"You'll come back in the spring, Mr. Frodo, won't you? You won't stay away no longer than that, surely!"

"Rose." He sighed and spread his hands out on his knees, rubbing absently at the place where the lost finger had been. "Rosie, I'm ill every spring, you know that. And every fall. It's not getting any better." He looked up and there was that in his eyes as nearly made me cry. "Bilbo never did come back from Rivendell."

"Mr. Frodo, no! You've got to come back; Sam won't never get over it, if you don't!"

It seemed like he winced, when I said that, and I kicked myself for giving him pain. But it was true. He had to know it was true.

I carried Elanor over to the cradle and tucked her in. I ran my hand over the carvings – it had been Bilbo's, this cradle, Mr. Frodo's gift to us. He wouldn't never have a child of his own to lay in it. I went back and knelt by his chair.

"Mr. Frodo, don't go, please don't! Or promise me you'll come back in the spring! If you're sick again, we'll take care of you, me and Sam. We love you, Mr. Frodo."

My eyes were so full of tears, I couldn't hardly see him, and I took his hand and held it to my cheek.

"Don't leave us, Mr. Frodo."

"We'll see, Rosie." He reached out his other hand and stroked my hair. "We have gotten to be like family, haven't we? The three of us, and little Elanor. But – well, we do what we have to do. If I can't come back, you hold on tight to Sam. You'll bring him through all right. Sam came back whole from Mordor, not like his master."

There was a catch in his voice, and he didn't say no more. He went off to bed, and I sat waiting for Sam. When he finally got home, he noticed my red eyes.

"Now, Rosie, don't tell me you're coming down with this cold as well," he exclaimed, holding me close.

"No, just something in the air that bothers my eyes," I lied. "Hay fever, most like."

Chapter 34: Seasons

in which Rosie has the answer

It was weeks later that he told Sam about his plan to visit Bilbo. Sam took it better than I expected. The book was finished at last, and I guess he thought the master needed a holiday.

He rode away with Mr. Frodo that last morning, to start him on his way to Rivendell. He was a bit downcast to think of Frodo being away all winter, but he was happy, too, to be going off with him again, even for just a couple of weeks. And I was glad for him to have that pleasure, and put out of my mind what must come next spring, if Frodo didn’t return. After all, I comforted myself, he may think better of it. Bag End is such a happy place. Even among the Elves, he may get homesick and decide to come back to us.

I hoped for that, but it shook me when he came to say goodbye. Sam was out on the road holding their ponies, and I was standing by the gate with Elanor in my arms waving bye-bye. Mr. Frodo came down the steps behind me and wrapped his arms around me, the only time he ever did anything like that, and whispered in my ear.

“Take care of him, Rosie! You’re such a comforting lass. Take care of him for me.”

Two weeks later Sam came back, just as it was getting dark. He came in so quiet, I wouldn't have known he was there if I hadn't been looking toward the door, and I never saw a sadder face by any graveside.

"Well, I'm back," he said, and sat down in his usual chair like he meant to never get up again. It struck fear to my heart, the look on his face.

Elanor was sitting in her high chair banging her spoon on the tray; she'd just learned to hold onto her spoon, not that she could feed herself yet. She saw her Da and she set to laughing and warbling like a whole circus had rolled into the room, and Sam looked over at her and a little life, just a little, came back in his eyes. I scooped her up quick and set her on his lap, and I knelt down on the floor and wrapped my arms around the two of them.

"What is it, Sam? What happened?"

He buried his face in Elanor's curls and his voice was that muffled, I couldn't hardly hear him.

"He wasn't going to Rivendell. He was going to the Havens. He's gone over the Sea, Rosie, over the Sea forever. We'll never see him no more, never again."

He held on to Elanor with one arm and reached out the other to gather me in, and we clung together that way, the baby between us, crying in each other's arms for a long time. But Elanor got restless after a while and started fussing. It don't matter how your heart is breaking, there's always going to be someone around who wants supper.

So life went on, even without Frodo. I guess it was easier on me than it was on Sam. I got to sit down and cuddle Elanor, feed her, every few hours, and that was a comfort to me. Still, I kept thinking I heard a step in the passage and turning to say a word to Mr. Frodo, and then remembering he was gone. There was many a day I cried as I sat rocking the baby. It was wrong, all wrong. He suffered so much to save the Shire, and then he couldn’t stay and enjoy it.

He left Bag End to us; oh, he was always good to us, Mr. Frodo was! It was a mercy, for I don't know what I would have done with Sam, if we'd had to go looking for a new home right then. As it was, I feared for him. He was like a sleepwalker, going through the motions, doing his work, speaking when he had to, but all the time he wasn't really there.

One evening I went looking for him, thinking it was time we got off to bed, seeing we were always up early with the baby. I found him in Mr. Frodo's old room, kneeling by the side of the bed with his head down. I thought at first he'd fallen asleep that way, and I came in quiet like, hating to wake him yet knowing he'd have the backache if he slept like that. But then he moaned, and I saw he had that old mithril shirt of Mr. Frodo's in his arms. He heard me and lifted his head, and his face was all marked from that mail shirt pressed up against his skin, and wet from crying.

"Samwise, my dear, my dear!" I sat down on the bed and pulled him to me, and he laid his head on my lap. Even his hair was wet, from tears or sweat, I don't know which. He leaned against me, shivering, and I stroked his hair.

"Oh Sam, darling, you can't go on like this, you have to let him go. He's not dead, you know. He's safe, and healing from all his wounds, even if he's far away. He was suffering here, you know he was."

"I know." Sam shifted and wrapped his arms around me, still kneeling on the floor. "Rosie lass, I didn't tell you everything."

Now it's coming, I thought. There had to be more to it, something troubling him beyond just missing Mr. Frodo. I held my breath, hoping I could bear whatever was coming.

"I was a Ring-bearer too, Rosie. Only for a little while, but I was. And before he left, Mr. Frodo said my time would come someday, to go to the Havens. And Rosie, I want to go, I do! I don't know how I can bear it, else. But I don't want to leave you, nor the baby. I can't leave you, not again! Oh Rosie, I don't know how to go on, I'm that torn."

His face was so tragic, and I loved him so much. And it was so simple, so easy, if I could only make him see.

"Sam Gamgee, I'm surprised at you, and you a gardener. A person would think you'd never followed the seasons, from spring to summer, and summer to fall."

He looked at me like he thought I'd lost my mind, his head tipped to one side.

"Sam, didn't Mr. Frodo say you'd be Mayor someday?"

He nodded.

"You'll be Mayor, for as long as you want to be. That's what he said. And Frodo-lad will come, and Rosie-lass, and maybe other children, he said. And someday, someday, you'll go to the Havens, because you were a Ring-bearer, too. And you'll see him again.

"But not now, Sam. This is your season for the Shire, and for me. Later on will be your season to go after Mr. Frodo. You don't have to choose, Sam, you just have to follow the seasons, one after the other."

He drew my face down to his and kissed me, and we never did get out of Mr. Frodo's room that night.

That was back last fall, and I noticed this morning that the daffodils are coming up by the front door. I think he's all right now. And I think maybe Mr. Frodo was right, about all those children.